It's wrong to compare the security of a computer voting machine to other computers. It's better to compare the voting machine's security to the paper ballots they replace. If any granny can hack the box while supposedly voting, using $12 worth of tools bought at a grocery store, then it's not as secure as paper. Yes, any computer that you have physical access to you can hack, but can you hack a payphone to cough up its coins in 4 minutes?? Security of a voting machine must be at least as solid as security of a vending machine. Modern vending machines prove it can be done; fitting the same security into and onto a voting machine is just a matter of engineering.
At a facility I work at, there's so much non-optical cabling that they occassionally have interference from cable cross-talk. Using optical cables, that doesn't happen. Wire transmissions can be detected from outside an unshielded building, even if the cables go thru normal metal conduits.
You also delete the useless keys that Microsoft forced us to accept: F11, F12 (F1-F10 are seldom all used), Those two stupid "windows flag" keys, whatever the hell they do, and that key next to the right CTRL key that I keep hitting that changes my window focus and pops up the start menu. There's also those buttons on the newer keyboards - buttons that have no apparent function whatsoever: one's symbol is an envelope, another is a house that I'd like to burn down, one has a "Q" and one has the universal symbol for "outhouse" (a crescent moon). Or maybe that has something to do with Islamic symbols, like "push this button to make a donation to the Red Crescent (instead of the Red Cross)".
And I've never see the "Pause" button pause anything. Ctrl-Pause will break into Unix/Linux apps, but I can do that with Ctrl-Z easier. "Print Screen" only does so when combined with Ctrl. "SysRq" has never done anything at all that I'm aware of, I don't even know of any apps that use or what scan codes it generates. I could go on, but I'm beginning to rant...
In my analogy, it's the INDUSTRY calling 911, not an individual. MS, when speaking on the technet blog, is describing the impact of the virus on the internet as a whole.
In the analogy, the burning house represents the vulnerable systems on the internet, and the dispatcher (MS) is saying the fire (MS06-040) is unimportant because "only part of the kitchen is burning" == "only some vulnerable systems are being attacked".
I do agree that MS products, in general, implement older technologies ("50 year old wiring"), and after MS's inspection of their own products, MS decides not to "update the wiring" except when forced by industry or circumstances (like Blaster).
And I really don't think MS would ever suggest to the industry to "get out of the house" when "the house" is Windows.
As to the other poster who described all the details of what's wrong that makes MS boxen easy targets, I would remind same poster that MS was pressured by the industry for years and several major releases of Windows to stop shipping the product with all the services on and ports open.
The fact that the poster knows of industry response (hw coming with "MS Networking blocks option") shows that the poster should know it's MS that releases unprotected products that others have to react to.
MS06-040 is a vulnerability that allows an attacker to take over a PC whose only crime is running Windows while connected to the internet. No user action required. It looks like the blog on technet calls the current attack "extremely small" and "extremely targeted" - to only those PCs running W2K, which as I understand it, is millions of bidniz PCs. This is like calling 911 and having the dispatcher say "It can't be a very bad fire if it's only in the kitchen! Call us back when it gets to attic."
Remember that ALL of the terrorists in the attack on 9/11 successfully passed thru security checks.
What if, instead of NO ONE being allowed to have weapons on the plane, most people were allowed to? What's the difference between a police officer of any enforcement agency, and a private citizen? Training, certification, background checks, and a career choice. What if ANY citizen that can qualify the same way be allowed to carry weapons in the same way? Why should a citizen have to make a specific career choice in order to be allowed to carry self-defense? Offer the same exact training and treatment that police get to everyone - and allow anyone to do it. Weed out the same people that police training/certification does, and the rest are armed. That means that the armed citizens, whether they're security guards, computer programmers, waitresses, librarians, etc are just as trust worthy with weapons as those people whose career choice was police work. And like any police officer, these trusted armed citizens can be found going about their lives and jobs in restaraunts, subways, on airplanes, etc. I don't think there's any way that terrorists could plan around that in a meaningful to make a 9/11 attack possible.
The purpose isn't so much that it's LIKELY they'll have to shoot, fight, etc. But that the uber-terrorists that plan all this crap, safe in their caves in Outer Rockpile Bumphork, Asia will know those guys are there. They'll know that any plan they hatch must come up with a way to deal with or bypass enforcement located at front, back, and an unknown/unknowable location.
The reason they're targetting planes is cuz air traffic is a Tootsie Roll Pop - Hard crunchy outside, but soft chewy inside. Once they get past the security at the airport, there's nothing to oppose them on the airplane itself.
Even if armed guards can be overcome, it will so thoroughly complicate any planning that air travel will become safer. The terrorists will have to target something else. But that's another problem.
In SE houston, we had a small start up airline called "Metro Air". They flew twin and 3-engine craft, seated about 20-40 passengers, went Houston-San Antonio, Austion, DFW, New Orleans, a few other closeby destinations, cheaper than you could drive a car, and about half the time. They flew out of small airports, the kind that can't take jets. Their planes were always full, and they were expanding flights, etc. They were seriously cutting into the big jet/big airline's market space because of simple efficiency: prop planes use less fuel, less ground support, require less technology, etc.
Continental bought them out and shut them down.
I heard (but can't verify myself) that these "puddle jumper" airlines were popping up all over the country because of this, and the big airlines were buying them like Continental did.
Your dissimulations are laughably false - I suspect you of being a shill. For example: "Put an address on it and a solid lock".
The purpose of luggage is NOT to get it back to the address you started from - it's to get the luggage to the place you're going at the same time you get there.
Here's a more reasonable, and in the long run, cheaper solution:
Just go ahead and put two US soldiers on every plane - one at the front, and one at the back. Then a plainsclothes Air Marshall. All armed.
No arrests - just shoot anyone who gets violent or makes threats.
If they survive the first round, shoot'em till dead.
Even if they're drunk and it's air rage.
Even if the threat isn't credible.
Two or three like this, we'll have the safest planes in the sky. You won't even have to do more than what was done before 9/11 in the way of passenger screening.
I was in the USAF many moons ago, and after a long deployment in late winter in a very cold, icy, wet, miserable place, living in tents with kerosene stoves, wooden floors and sidewalks and nothing, nothing, nothing to do and nothing that was completely dry and unfrozen,
the fricken military customs agent made us stand (not sit-ground was wet) OUTSIDE at 3-8 AM (all 5 hours) while he (green looey) and two sgts went thru every damn duffel and ditty bag for the whole fricken' ground support squadron.
We've been out on bivouac you damn idiot, there wasn't any contraband out there for us to smuggle back to the states- not even poison ivy cuz it's TOO DAMN COLD!!!!!
If your 15 yr old daughter goes out to the mall and comes home 3 hours later without taking drugs, drinking booze or having sex, she's made a choice. If yer kid doesn't get (buy,steal,borrow from a buddy, get a buddy's big bro to buy, etc) that violent video game, he's made a choice. All the laws prohibiting kids from doing things are attempting to do the impossible: take away choice. The fact is, once the kid knows it's out there, every minute he/she doesn't go for it is a decision made. Choice exists no matter what the law says. All the law can do is surprise the kid at how nasty and unjust the consequences can be for making simple "mistakes". And btw - I'll bet there's very few times that a kid sees something and is *shocked* cuz he's totally unprepared for it emotionally. That's the problem they're trying to get at - kids' emotional health being afflicted by shocking material they're unprepared for. You know what a kid is prepared for when that dvd is slammed in the slot? Fiction. Fake action, trash talking, lights flashing. The shock that may happen is always limited to what the kid can imagine that fictional image may represent in real life - and that's a self-regulating mechanism. A person is simply unable to imagine something that harmfully shocks them. Their own emotional systems will prevent it - like trying to hold your breath too long. Eventually, the internal systems take over and correct for the kid's idiocy.
I suggest two ways: A high level "bizniz map" and a detailed "data trail". My company is a polyglot conglomerated transmogrification of several gov't contracts, divisions of previous contractors whose contracts were consolidated, organizational divisons both on gov't and corp sides. We had the same problem as budget cuts forced us to compress. The data trail identifies sets of data from their origin points thru every app and person that touches the data, making special note of decision points. A decision point is where a single person (not group, not "CM" or "accounting") decides to change the direction of the data flow, or makes a go/nogo decision (cancels a software request, decides to not merge data sets x and y this month, etc). The bizniz map will map the needs from the business viewpoint: organizations-> "bizniz needs" concepts -> applications -> data. By connecting apps by the bizniz need they met, we were able to categorize: > Which needs had more than one app? (nearly all) > Which apps were good enuf (scalable/maintainable) to take on the entire enterprise? (Consolidate other app's data and needs into the good ones) > Which apps were only useful in the data they contained? (export the data to the good apps, and delete the weak app) > Which apps overlapped in requirements? Some apps we split down the middle - moved some of the requirements (and data) to the upscale apps and "stub out" the no-longer-needed capability of lesser app.
One thing that kept coming up - a surprising number of functional organizations had spreadsheets, sets of.Doc templates, etc, to meet their requirements, and these created an astounding amount of work to move up to the corporate-chosen apps. The old data had to be kept, of course, and it wasn't in any kind of good shape. Sometimes, data format and content changed from one month to the next, no versioning, no docs, no controls, no nothin' but the MS app -.MDE,.XLS,.PPT even. However you organize the work, don't forget "the little guys" like this - The people that use and maintain these micro-apps have these things in common: > The micro-app was likely created out of frustration and desperation to get a handle on a "minor" bizniz need that corp. IT didn't prioritize. > Even the possibility of being overlooked is likely to be sore spot - and will get a highly vocal (politically negative) outcry. > The micro-apps contain data that is crucial to the functioning of a relatively small part of the organization. > Created by one person (at most two), who is now very well-liked and respected by the organization's boss - who also understands the importance of the micro-app to his function.
Overlooking the micro-apps would be a major mistake as you map all this out.
One particular process I analyzed and tracked went from Excel to.csv file to mainframe DBS to print file, printed and faxed to someone who then entered the data in another Excel in order to organize it for export to a.csv so that it could be read by a realtime engineering simulator. The two excel spreadsheets were on the same LAN. At least nine functional points (people) were involved in this. But in years past, before excel and LANS existed, this all made sense. We shortened the process path to ONE point - and eliminated more than a month from the schedule for processing the data. This is the kind of thing that gets functional managers (Supervisors and their bosses) to support you. Just show them the inefficiencies in the existing micro-app structure, and how it can be improved.
- Moronic politicians get caught up in the hype, form a gov't agency called National Art-intel Singularity Administration to make it happen, and the country's resources in AI are drained away into ineffectiveness and software that keeps crashing. Nah, the gov't wouldn't do something that dumb.
If the problem space is big enough, human-style reasoning may be able to adapt, but the computer would not. There is a qualitative difference between the two that is crucial. One can easily design a chess-style game that humans can master but computers could not compute within the lifetime of the universe. Brute force can only take you so far. Like another poster said, you put a million calculators together, all you got is a million calculators, not a brain. The chess software that has beaten humans has merely proven that if you make the abacus fast enough, it can balance the check book faster than a human. Which anyone could have predicted without building a billion-dollar computer.
Nuclear-powered aircraft. - Humans have flight technology and use it; humans have nuclear power tech and use it (well, outside the US, anyway). Combining the two into one doesn't result in a different technology any more than combining a mouse click and a book purchase (like Amazon's "one click" patent).
Project Orion. - "Capable of" can include "economically and politically" as well as engineering. However, I would point out that Project Orion was a proposal based quite deliberately on *existing* technologies. That is, humans have already built (and regrettably, used) every component required to make Orion fly, we just haven't put them together. However, there is some question about the engineering required to shield, absorb impact, and not ablate, the thrust from Orion's nuclear bomb "engine"
Mach 3 aircraft with real payload, e.g. the XB-70. "With real payload" is merely engineering existing technologies into new forms. Mach 3 has been achieved, and by several aircraft. Just because it hasn't been engineered into a giraffe shape that flies upside down doesn't mean it's a "technology humans have refrained from".
Fiber to the home. Like the Mach 3 and Orion, the technology exists and is "not refrained from". Just cuz they didn't run it to *your* house;) doesn't mean humanity as a whole has refrained from using the technology.
Mathematical intelligence. Since it's really math based. Software is the experiment, the computer is the laboratory. But the intelligence is in the math.
Please don't attack me with math - I'm trying to explain some complex concepts in (possibly overly) simplisitic plain-language terms. The incompleteness theorem says that every problem-solving system is either incomplete, or inconsistent, or both. For example, arithmetic: divide by zero = undefined; arithemetic is incomplete. Square root of -1: uh.... that's either an inconsistency or incompleteness; i is a kludge, since its only purpose in existing is so that -1 has a root. The incompleteness theorem applies to *every* problem-solving system, including the massive collection of 6billion plus human minds on this planet. But that's not all the theorem says. It also says that for each problem solving system, there are problems that can be described and solved; problems that be described but not solved; and problems that *can't*even*be*described* using the symbols and methods of the system. Old calculators can't handle phone numbers and addresses; the most modern hand held can't explain why your dog MUST be walked every morning. The singularity is that moment of history wherein all of the following comes together: > Humans define and construct a problem-solving system of some type that has a greater-than-human problem solving ability; > Said system isn't just slightly faster, but qualitatively better. A faster word processor is no use - you can only type so fast. But a lexical analyzer that can correct your spelling and grammar, and obfuscate it enough that teacher can't tell you didn't write it - that's qualitatively better. > Said system has control, or at least significant managing influence, over things that humans have trouble with, like our geo-political-economic system. > Said system is in place widely enough and long enough to make itself felt.
By definition, we can't predict what happens next, anymore than dogs could have predicted the result of sleeping by some ancient human's fire.
The first caveman to handle fire was probably pretty surprised. But I'll bet there was another caveman there who said he'd known it was gonna happen all along.
was the mastery of fire. There's no way the humanoids then could understand where it would lead. It didn't look like a singularity because history moved very slowly 200K-500K years ago.
Currently, there is an industry filled with people who make a living examining existing trends and predicting where those trends will lead us, and what the world will look like from various viewpoints. The most important (politically, and in the short term) is economic, of course. But sociological, military, etc, all fields are part of the futurist's concerns. Some people look at the singularity and say that it does not have to happen, or it will not. But: name one technological advance that humans in the past have been capable of and refrained from. There are none. The concept of "singularity" is a humanist viewpoint: Models may be conceived that predict what happens beyond the singularity - but humans won't be the ones conceiving them. That's what makes it a singularity. Once "transhuman intelligence" (whatever form it takes) begins to operate in the human world (guiding economics, helping make political decisions, coming up with new marketing angles, managing manufacturing processes), there is no way us mere humans can predict what effect the "transhumans" will have on the world. And that can be very good or very, very bad. No one has any real idea.
And it wasn't just one website, actually. I was trying to find non-Microsoft info (i.e., bug workaround/fixes) for the MS Access "dbconnect" or "connect" (i fergit) type parameters. I was trying to connect to an Access database from a webpage, and googled the parameter name I was having trouble with (DSN=, IIRC), and all these thousands of actual connect strings embedded in HTML came up, from thousands of websites.
It turns out some HTML generator (frontpage, maybe, or some other cheap tool) would generate the string when the user/"website developer" would "design" (clickdrag) an access database to a webpage being built.
And since the password in the connect strings to Access are unencrypted....
hoooh boy. "Trustworthy computing", indeed.
I accidentally stumbled on a small town's website where the login HTML had the SQL itself in a javascript snippet. That's right, the entire "Select * from Users where userid=$forminput1 and password=$forminput2". I considered sending them email, or even snailmail, advising them just how wide open their system was, but realized that people that ignorant would probably have me thrown in jail for "hacking" their website. I agree that SQL injections seldom work against even a moderately competent programmer. Any bank that admits that hackers have suddenly been drawn to their site for this tells me that bank probably had/has some vulnerable spots that were discovered, and the hackers are trying to find more.
Slashdot Mirror
It's wrong to compare the security of a computer voting machine to other computers. It's better to compare the voting machine's security to the paper ballots they replace.
If any granny can hack the box while supposedly voting, using $12 worth of tools bought at a grocery store, then it's not as secure as paper.
Yes, any computer that you have physical access to you can hack, but can you hack a payphone to cough up its coins in 4 minutes??
Security of a voting machine must be at least as solid as security of a vending machine. Modern vending machines prove it can be done; fitting the same security into and onto a voting machine is just a matter of engineering.
At a facility I work at, there's so much non-optical cabling that they occassionally have interference from cable cross-talk. Using optical cables, that doesn't happen. Wire transmissions can be detected from outside an unshielded building, even if the cables go thru normal metal conduits.
Stop yelling at each other.
Then there's the guy who says "I have to be able to yell at people - My doctor told me to reduce stress!"
You also delete the useless keys that Microsoft forced us to accept:
F11, F12 (F1-F10 are seldom all used), Those two stupid "windows flag" keys, whatever the hell they do, and that key next to the right CTRL key that I keep hitting that changes my window focus and pops up the start menu. There's also those buttons on the newer keyboards - buttons that have no apparent function whatsoever: one's symbol is an envelope, another is a house that I'd like to burn down, one has a "Q" and one has the universal symbol for "outhouse" (a crescent moon). Or maybe that has something to do with Islamic symbols, like "push this button to make a donation to the Red Crescent (instead of the Red Cross)".
And I've never see the "Pause" button pause anything. Ctrl-Pause will break into Unix/Linux apps, but I can do that with Ctrl-Z easier. "Print Screen" only does so when combined with Ctrl. "SysRq" has never done anything at all that I'm aware of, I don't even know of any apps that use or what scan codes it generates.
I could go on, but I'm beginning to rant...
In my analogy, it's the INDUSTRY calling 911, not an individual. MS, when speaking on the technet blog, is describing the impact of the virus on the internet as a whole. In the analogy, the burning house represents the vulnerable systems on the internet, and the dispatcher (MS) is saying the fire (MS06-040) is unimportant because "only part of the kitchen is burning" == "only some vulnerable systems are being attacked". I do agree that MS products, in general, implement older technologies ("50 year old wiring"), and after MS's inspection of their own products, MS decides not to "update the wiring" except when forced by industry or circumstances (like Blaster). And I really don't think MS would ever suggest to the industry to "get out of the house" when "the house" is Windows. As to the other poster who described all the details of what's wrong that makes MS boxen easy targets, I would remind same poster that MS was pressured by the industry for years and several major releases of Windows to stop shipping the product with all the services on and ports open. The fact that the poster knows of industry response (hw coming with "MS Networking blocks option") shows that the poster should know it's MS that releases unprotected products that others have to react to.
MS06-040 is a vulnerability that allows an attacker to take over a PC whose only crime is running Windows while connected to the internet. No user action required.
It looks like the blog on technet calls the current attack "extremely small" and "extremely targeted" - to only those PCs running W2K, which as I understand it, is millions of bidniz PCs.
This is like calling 911 and having the dispatcher say "It can't be a very bad fire if it's only in the kitchen! Call us back when it gets to attic."
Remember that ALL of the terrorists in the attack on 9/11 successfully passed thru security checks.
What if, instead of NO ONE being allowed to have weapons on the plane, most people were allowed to?
What's the difference between a police officer of any enforcement agency, and a private citizen? Training, certification, background checks, and a career choice.
What if ANY citizen that can qualify the same way be allowed to carry weapons in the same way? Why should a citizen have to make a specific career choice in order to be allowed to carry self-defense?
Offer the same exact training and treatment that police get to everyone - and allow anyone to do it. Weed out the same people that police training/certification does, and the rest are armed.
That means that the armed citizens, whether they're security guards, computer programmers, waitresses, librarians, etc are just as trust worthy with weapons as those people whose career choice was police work.
And like any police officer, these trusted armed citizens can be found going about their lives and jobs in restaraunts, subways, on airplanes, etc.
I don't think there's any way that terrorists could plan around that in a meaningful to make a 9/11 attack possible.
The purpose isn't so much that it's LIKELY they'll have to shoot, fight, etc. But that the uber-terrorists that plan all this crap, safe in their caves in Outer Rockpile Bumphork, Asia will know those guys are there. They'll know that any plan they hatch must come up with a way to deal with or bypass enforcement located at front, back, and an unknown/unknowable location. The reason they're targetting planes is cuz air traffic is a Tootsie Roll Pop - Hard crunchy outside, but soft chewy inside. Once they get past the security at the airport, there's nothing to oppose them on the airplane itself.
Even if armed guards can be overcome, it will so thoroughly complicate any planning that air travel will become safer. The terrorists will have to target something else. But that's another problem.
HA HA ha ahaa heeeyuk yuk shwoooeee..
Yup, I'd like to have been at some of those parties....
thanx.
In SE houston, we had a small start up airline called "Metro Air". They flew twin and 3-engine craft, seated about 20-40 passengers, went Houston-San Antonio, Austion, DFW, New Orleans, a few other closeby destinations, cheaper than you could drive a car, and about half the time. They flew out of small airports, the kind that can't take jets. Their planes were always full, and they were expanding flights, etc. They were seriously cutting into the big jet/big airline's market space because of simple efficiency: prop planes use less fuel, less ground support, require less technology, etc.
Continental bought them out and shut them down.
I heard (but can't verify myself) that these "puddle jumper" airlines were popping up all over the country because of this, and the big airlines were buying them like Continental did.
Your dissimulations are laughably false - I suspect you of being a shill.
For example: "Put an address on it and a solid lock".
The purpose of luggage is NOT to get it back to the address you started from - it's to get the luggage to the place you're going at the same time you get there.
Here's a more reasonable, and in the long run, cheaper solution:
Just go ahead and put two US soldiers on every plane - one at the front, and one at the back. Then a plainsclothes Air Marshall. All armed. No arrests - just shoot anyone who gets violent or makes threats. If they survive the first round, shoot'em till dead. Even if they're drunk and it's air rage. Even if the threat isn't credible. Two or three like this, we'll have the safest planes in the sky. You won't even have to do more than what was done before 9/11 in the way of passenger screening.
I was in the USAF many moons ago, and after a long deployment in late winter in a very cold, icy, wet, miserable place, living in tents with kerosene stoves, wooden floors and sidewalks and nothing, nothing, nothing to do and nothing that was completely dry and unfrozen,
the fricken military customs agent made us stand (not sit-ground was wet) OUTSIDE at 3-8 AM (all 5 hours) while he (green looey) and two sgts went thru every damn duffel and ditty bag for the whole fricken' ground support squadron.
We've been out on bivouac you damn idiot, there wasn't any contraband out there for us to smuggle back to the states- not even poison ivy cuz it's TOO DAMN COLD!!!!!
Sorry. Been there, done that. I'm ok now.
If your 15 yr old daughter goes out to the mall and comes home 3 hours later without taking drugs, drinking booze or having sex, she's made a choice. If yer kid doesn't get (buy,steal,borrow from a buddy, get a buddy's big bro to buy, etc) that violent video game, he's made a choice.
All the laws prohibiting kids from doing things are attempting to do the impossible: take away choice. The fact is, once the kid knows it's out there, every minute he/she doesn't go for it is a decision made.
Choice exists no matter what the law says. All the law can do is surprise the kid at how nasty and unjust the consequences can be for making simple "mistakes".
And btw - I'll bet there's very few times that a kid sees something and is *shocked* cuz he's totally unprepared for it emotionally. That's the problem they're trying to get at - kids' emotional health being afflicted by shocking material they're unprepared for.
You know what a kid is prepared for when that dvd is slammed in the slot? Fiction. Fake action, trash talking, lights flashing. The shock that may happen is always limited to what the kid can imagine that fictional image may represent in real life - and that's a self-regulating mechanism. A person is simply unable to imagine something that harmfully shocks them. Their own emotional systems will prevent it - like trying to hold your breath too long. Eventually, the internal systems take over and correct for the kid's idiocy.
I suggest two ways: A high level "bizniz map" and a detailed "data trail".
.Doc templates, etc, to meet their requirements, and these created an astounding amount of work to move up to the corporate-chosen apps. The old data had to be kept, of course, and it wasn't in any kind of good shape. Sometimes, data format and content changed from one month to the next, no versioning, no docs, no controls, no nothin' but the MS app - .MDE, .XLS, .PPT even.
.csv file to mainframe DBS to print file, printed and faxed to someone who then entered the data in another Excel in order to organize it for export to a .csv so that it could be read by a realtime engineering simulator.
My company is a polyglot conglomerated transmogrification of several gov't contracts, divisions of previous contractors whose contracts were consolidated, organizational divisons both on gov't and corp sides. We had the same problem as budget cuts forced us to compress.
The data trail identifies sets of data from their origin points thru every app and person that touches the data, making special note of decision points. A decision point is where a single person (not group, not "CM" or "accounting") decides to change the direction of the data flow, or makes a go/nogo decision (cancels a software request, decides to not merge data sets x and y this month, etc).
The bizniz map will map the needs from the business viewpoint: organizations-> "bizniz needs" concepts -> applications -> data.
By connecting apps by the bizniz need they met, we were able to categorize:
> Which needs had more than one app? (nearly all)
> Which apps were good enuf (scalable/maintainable) to take on the entire enterprise? (Consolidate other app's data and needs into the good ones)
> Which apps were only useful in the data they contained? (export the data to the good apps, and delete the weak app)
> Which apps overlapped in requirements? Some apps we split down the middle - moved some of the requirements (and data) to the upscale apps and "stub out" the no-longer-needed capability of lesser app.
One thing that kept coming up - a surprising number of functional organizations had spreadsheets, sets of
However you organize the work, don't forget "the little guys" like this - The people that use and maintain these micro-apps have these things in common:
> The micro-app was likely created out of frustration and desperation to get a handle on a "minor" bizniz need that corp. IT didn't prioritize.
> Even the possibility of being overlooked is likely to be sore spot - and will get a highly vocal (politically negative) outcry.
> The micro-apps contain data that is crucial to the functioning of a relatively small part of the organization.
> Created by one person (at most two), who is now very well-liked and respected by the organization's boss - who also understands the importance of the micro-app to his function.
Overlooking the micro-apps would be a major mistake as you map all this out.
One particular process I analyzed and tracked went from Excel to
The two excel spreadsheets were on the same LAN. At least nine functional points (people) were involved in this. But in years past, before excel and LANS existed, this all made sense. We shortened the process path to ONE point - and eliminated more than a month from the schedule for processing the data. This is the kind of thing that gets functional managers (Supervisors and their bosses) to support you. Just show them the inefficiencies in the existing micro-app structure, and how it can be improved.
- Moronic politicians get caught up in the hype, form a gov't agency called National Art-intel Singularity Administration to make it happen, and the country's resources in AI are drained away into ineffectiveness and software that keeps crashing.
Nah, the gov't wouldn't do something that dumb.
If the problem space is big enough, human-style reasoning may be able to adapt, but the computer would not. There is a qualitative difference between the two that is crucial. One can easily design a chess-style game that humans can master but computers could not compute within the lifetime of the universe. Brute force can only take you so far. Like another poster said, you put a million calculators together, all you got is a million calculators, not a brain.
The chess software that has beaten humans has merely proven that if you make the abacus fast enough, it can balance the check book faster than a human. Which anyone could have predicted without building a billion-dollar computer.
Nuclear-powered aircraft. - Humans have flight technology and use it; humans have nuclear power tech and use it (well, outside the US, anyway). Combining the two into one doesn't result in a different technology any more than combining a mouse click and a book purchase (like Amazon's "one click" patent).
;) doesn't mean humanity as a whole has refrained from using the technology.
:-) OK, I'll give you this one.
Flying cars. The word for flying car is "airplane". Or if you prefer, hovercraft...or helicopter. But if you want something that *looks* like a car but flies, try this: http://www.afaco.com/ or this: http://www.volanteaircraft.com/ or this: http://www.moller.com/ or for something small and jet powered, try this: http://aviationtrivia.homestead.com/BD5J.html (I've seen this in an airshow - it's amazing)
Well, I think you get the idea.
Project Orion. - "Capable of" can include "economically and politically" as well as engineering. However, I would point out that Project Orion was a proposal based quite deliberately on *existing* technologies. That is, humans have already built (and regrettably, used) every component required to make Orion fly, we just haven't put them together. However, there is some question about the engineering required to shield, absorb impact, and not ablate, the thrust from Orion's nuclear bomb "engine"
Mach 3 aircraft with real payload, e.g. the XB-70. "With real payload" is merely engineering existing technologies into new forms. Mach 3 has been achieved, and by several aircraft. Just because it hasn't been engineered into a giraffe shape that flies upside down doesn't mean it's a "technology humans have refrained from".
Fiber to the home. Like the Mach 3 and Orion, the technology exists and is "not refrained from". Just cuz they didn't run it to *your* house
Betamax
Mathematical intelligence. Since it's really math based. Software is the experiment, the computer is the laboratory. But the intelligence is in the math.
in the last program I wrote...
If (! (user & sherlock) ){
printf ("No sh*t, sherlock!\n");
}
else {
printf ("It's technical. You wouldn't understand.\n");
}
Please don't attack me with math - I'm trying to explain some complex concepts in (possibly overly) simplisitic plain-language terms.
The incompleteness theorem says that every problem-solving system is either incomplete, or inconsistent, or both. For example, arithmetic: divide by zero = undefined; arithemetic is incomplete. Square root of -1: uh.... that's either an inconsistency or incompleteness; i is a kludge, since its only purpose in existing is so that -1 has a root.
The incompleteness theorem applies to *every* problem-solving system, including the massive collection of 6billion plus human minds on this planet.
But that's not all the theorem says. It also says that for each problem solving system, there are problems that can be described and solved; problems that be described but not solved; and problems that *can't*even*be*described* using the symbols and methods of the system. Old calculators can't handle phone numbers and addresses; the most modern hand held can't explain why your dog MUST be walked every morning.
The singularity is that moment of history wherein all of the following comes together:
> Humans define and construct a problem-solving system of some type that has a greater-than-human problem solving ability;
> Said system isn't just slightly faster, but qualitatively better. A faster word processor is no use - you can only type so fast. But a lexical analyzer that can correct your spelling and grammar, and obfuscate it enough that teacher can't tell you didn't write it - that's qualitatively better.
> Said system has control, or at least significant managing influence, over things that humans have trouble with, like our geo-political-economic system.
> Said system is in place widely enough and long enough to make itself felt.
By definition, we can't predict what happens next, anymore than dogs could have predicted the result of sleeping by some ancient human's fire.
The first caveman to handle fire was probably pretty surprised. But I'll bet there was another caveman there who said he'd known it was gonna happen all along.
was the mastery of fire. There's no way the humanoids then could understand where it would lead. It didn't look like a singularity because history moved very slowly 200K-500K years ago.
Currently, there is an industry filled with people who make a living examining existing trends and predicting where those trends will lead us, and what the world will look like from various viewpoints. The most important (politically, and in the short term) is economic, of course. But sociological, military, etc, all fields are part of the futurist's concerns. Some people look at the singularity and say that it does not have to happen, or it will not. But: name one technological advance that humans in the past have been capable of and refrained from. There are none. The concept of "singularity" is a humanist viewpoint: Models may be conceived that predict what happens beyond the singularity - but humans won't be the ones conceiving them. That's what makes it a singularity.
Once "transhuman intelligence" (whatever form it takes) begins to operate in the human world (guiding economics, helping make political decisions, coming up with new marketing angles, managing manufacturing processes), there is no way us mere humans can predict what effect the "transhumans" will have on the world.
And that can be very good or very, very bad. No one has any real idea.
And it wasn't just one website, actually. I was trying to find non-Microsoft info (i.e., bug workaround/fixes) for the MS Access "dbconnect" or "connect" (i fergit) type parameters. I was trying to connect to an Access database from a webpage, and googled the parameter name I was having trouble with (DSN=, IIRC), and all these thousands of actual connect strings embedded in HTML came up, from thousands of websites.
It turns out some HTML generator (frontpage, maybe, or some other cheap tool) would generate the string when the user/"website developer" would "design" (clickdrag) an access database to a webpage being built.
And since the password in the connect strings to Access are unencrypted....
hoooh boy. "Trustworthy computing", indeed.
I accidentally stumbled on a small town's website where the login HTML had the SQL itself in a javascript snippet. That's right, the entire "Select * from Users where userid=$forminput1 and password=$forminput2".
I considered sending them email, or even snailmail, advising them just how wide open their system was, but realized that people that ignorant would probably have me thrown in jail for "hacking" their website.
I agree that SQL injections seldom work against even a moderately competent programmer. Any bank that admits that hackers have suddenly been drawn to their site for this tells me that bank probably had/has some vulnerable spots that were discovered, and the hackers are trying to find more.