Uh, some of the earliest encryption algorithms ever created are immune to MITM.
Yes, and they were built for communications between two parties, who knew they'd be communicating, and could exchange keys in advance.
Now, tell me one which is applicable to the problem of a large number of potential users, all unknown up front, and coming from random devices.
The problem with modern public key encryption (and its strength as well) is that you don't need to pre-exchange keys. But this opens you up to MITM attacks.
Key exchange is hard. Managing all of those keys is really hard. You think a bank can maintain a list (and keep it secure) of the private keys of every individual customer?
The thing which holds the keys (and every vendor you deal with would have a separate copy) then becomes the next attack vector.
I think the generalized problem of establishing, trust, and a secure exchange of keys, is far harder and more complex in a world where you deal with lots of entities, who deal with lots of entities. This isn't things your average person are going to be willing to spend hours doing.
This isn't "shifting" the goal posts. This is trying to actually come up with a meaningful metric for computer intelligence.
And the test which everyone was up in arms about was definitely not an indicator of computer intelligence, but narrowly defining the test in such a way as to make it look like they'd achieved it.
Their test was Can a computer program pretending to be a child speaking it's non-native language fool people, but it sure as hell wasn't a valid measure of how well we're doing with machine intelligence.
Yes actually, I do expect there to be some sympathy. Because everyone bitches when the NSA does it.
I don't disagree with you, but the hypocrisy of "but that's the job of the NSA" that I hear when someone points this out is maddening.
This was clearly wrong, they targeted another country's corporation, and one that has a huge impact on the Internet, worldwide.
And one which was doing business in their country. Like it or not, Google in India is subject to India's laws.
How many corporations and people in foreign countries have been targeted by the NSA? How many people think that is wrong?
There are an alarming number of people who basically say it's OK when the NSA does it, because that's their mandate.
It's only fair that you either get to protest when every and any country pulls something like this, or not at all.
Oh, I agree, and I disagree with the practice in general. But, as I said, it's appalling just how many Americans keep saying "it's fine when we do it, it's wrong when you do it".
I'm just reminding people of the apparent double standard which gets applied here and in the news.
Me, I think for a country to decide that their laws/desires trumps the rights of people in other countries, you lose some credibility when someone does the exact same thing to you.
There is that kind of need, however, for Adidas to sell a whole shitload of super-cool-awesome-double-plusgood soccer balls every couple of years at inflated prices.
And, let's face it, I bet the NSA et al have demanded more private keys be handed over to them than you'll ever know about. Where's your outrage over that?
The five eyes all use each other to spy on their own (and others) citizens, and share the information among themselves. Where's your outrage over that?
I see this as a symptom of a greater problem, but no different from what a bunch of other countries are already doing.
Until someone creates a new encryption system which isn't susceptible to MITM attacks, this will always be the case. And governments will always unashamedly insist on spying on their people, and anybody else they can find.
So how much money or jail time for Fraud and Impersonation? Oh right, it's ok when a government does it. And you can't complain to Uncle Sam as that would disrupt your business in that country.
And, really, if the US is saying it's their right to tap into anything they want to... how is it different when India does it?
India already forced BlackBerry to allow them to access BBM and the like.
Uncle Sam is causing as much disruption to US businesses abroad as anything, because people are realizing that American companies are effectively just extensions of the US spy apparatus -- because the PATRIOT act means they can demand whatever data they have, and you more or less have to assume they're doing it and being prevented from telling you.
Which means Indians are already being spied on by (at least) their own government AND the USA.
Do you expect there to be sympathy for an American company when a foreign government taps into them? Because I hear an awful lot of people saying they think it's perfectly OK when the US does it to foreigners.
Listening to an investment banker on the floor screaming "dont taze me bro" would pretty much make every single person on the planet smile at the same time. It would cause world peace and make cold fusion work.
Sounds like an awesome idea for a Kick Starter campaign.
When you talk about "we" have to leave the earth, I assume you are talking about a handful of lucky few. We're not going to save the billions of sick and dirt poor bastards, right ?
That is one of the many reasons I'm skeptical.
Because I can't imagine most people are going to lift a finger to help build the escape module for a bunch of rich assholes.:-P
I was merely listing the reasons why "we" might seriously be considering leaving Earth. I do not actually expect it to happen.
I can't think of any good reason to do it other than the coolness factor.
I think the implicit assumption is one of: we're going to completely fsck up this planet and have to leave, something else is going to threaten to fsck up this planet (and we'll have to leave), or we're going to outgrow and want to be elsewhere.
Do I think it likely we could pull it off (or even have the resources)? That I'm skeptical of.
When I see something which says "In 15 years the world will be like this", I think "My, what drivel", and move on.
From what I've seen in my lifetime, futurists and prognosticators are usually dead wrong, clueless, and writing little more than fiction.
It offers a sobering conclusion: We might be able to pull it off. But it will take an overhaul of the way we use energy, and a huge investment in the development and deployment of new energy technologies. Significantly, it calls for an entirely different approach to international diplomacy on the issue of how to combat climate change.
In other words, it will require the impossible, need huge sums of money, depend on a level of consensus and cooperation unlikely to happen, and a near complete re-tooling of societies.
In practice, your government simply ignores them, or strong arms the country in question.
America has ceased to be about the rule of law, just about what they want, and what they're willing to do. The laws, treaties, and demands of other countries is simply deemed irrelevant.
On an international scale, the US is more or less a rogue state which does as it pleases. And that is truly alarming, because the global message is "we don't give a fuck about you, we're Americans".
Since when did the US got power to arrest people in Maldives?
Since they decided to give it to themselves.
Does that mean they can just go into arbitrary countries and arrest people arbitrarily?
They've been sending in people to do snatch and grabs for years now. Then they send them to a 3rd country which can use 'enhanced' interrogation which would be illegal in the US.
And then they say that anything is legal because these people are enemy combatants who don't wear uniforms, and therefore not covered under any treaties.
Oh, and if they have to, they'll send in a drone strike in a country which hasn't authorized it, and if they happen to kill some civilians who were in the vicinity -- well, too bad that you were near someone we wanted to kill.
Seriously, have you not been paying attention? "Team America, World Police" has been a real thing now for quite some time. This is hardly the first time they've done this.
They simply don't care about things like sovereignty, and their own security needs trump everything.
A bunch of years ago I was involved in the airline industry.
The people who did the aircraft maintenance used to howl at the notion of the "water landing" -- because until those guys did it a few years ago in the Hudson, no commercial plane had ever done it and remained intact. Which makes what they did all the more impressive.
Those seat cushions under your chair in case of a water landing? Well, let's just say within the aviation industry, they're largely regarded as wreckage markers, not flotation devices to keep you alive in the event of a water landing.
In the event of mechanical (or system) failure(s), any pilot is at least going to want to be able to peer out a window with his own two eyes to see what's going on
Well, the corresponding counter point (just because) is that if people weren't relying on looking out the window... you wouldn't have pilots landing at the wrongdamnedairport.
Ideally, a digital display would have big giant warning signs which say "not this airport, dummy, that one over there".
Plus, I just LOVE the "flick the wrist to turn the light on" function. It means I can check the time in the dark even if I only have my watch-hand free.
Hmmm... define 'flick'?
My Casio solar powered watch, when I hold my forearm horizontally and turn the wrist to where I'd be able to read it... it turns on the light.
If I hold my wrist in any other position, the light doesn't come on.
It is a damned handy feature. Just look at your watch.
so let me get this straight... the country with arguably one of the best written histories over millennia, is no longer allowing history to be maintained?
If it goes against that the government has decreed to be true, yes.
Ask an average Chinese citizen what happened in Tainanmen Square in April of 1989. And they will either tell you "nothing at all", or that some unruly dissidents needed to be quieted down. Their understanding of what happened doesn't match what those of us who watched it live on TV remember.
In fact, the two are nothing at all alike, if they know about it at all.
Give it another 10-15 years, and China might not be the only country applying a little revisionist history to shape people's understanding of events.
Oppressive governments like to rewrite history. It makes it easier to control the plebes.
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Yes, and they were built for communications between two parties, who knew they'd be communicating, and could exchange keys in advance.
Now, tell me one which is applicable to the problem of a large number of potential users, all unknown up front, and coming from random devices.
The problem with modern public key encryption (and its strength as well) is that you don't need to pre-exchange keys. But this opens you up to MITM attacks.
Key exchange is hard. Managing all of those keys is really hard. You think a bank can maintain a list (and keep it secure) of the private keys of every individual customer?
The thing which holds the keys (and every vendor you deal with would have a separate copy) then becomes the next attack vector.
I think the generalized problem of establishing, trust, and a secure exchange of keys, is far harder and more complex in a world where you deal with lots of entities, who deal with lots of entities. This isn't things your average person are going to be willing to spend hours doing.
OK, so they have a $10K prize.
Now, purely to play devil's advocate -- if someone manages to exploit the system and doesn't tell anybody, is there more to be gained by that?
Even if it's just maliciously 'bricking' these cars, it seems like this incentive isn't as much as some other activities could be.
Hell, you could probably ransom people's cars back to them for more than that.
This isn't "shifting" the goal posts. This is trying to actually come up with a meaningful metric for computer intelligence.
And the test which everyone was up in arms about was definitely not an indicator of computer intelligence, but narrowly defining the test in such a way as to make it look like they'd achieved it.
Their test was Can a computer program pretending to be a child speaking it's non-native language fool people, but it sure as hell wasn't a valid measure of how well we're doing with machine intelligence.
I don't disagree with you, but the hypocrisy of "but that's the job of the NSA" that I hear when someone points this out is maddening.
And one which was doing business in their country. Like it or not, Google in India is subject to India's laws.
How many corporations and people in foreign countries have been targeted by the NSA? How many people think that is wrong?
There are an alarming number of people who basically say it's OK when the NSA does it, because that's their mandate.
Oh, I agree, and I disagree with the practice in general. But, as I said, it's appalling just how many Americans keep saying "it's fine when we do it, it's wrong when you do it".
I'm just reminding people of the apparent double standard which gets applied here and in the news.
Me, I think for a country to decide that their laws/desires trumps the rights of people in other countries, you lose some credibility when someone does the exact same thing to you.
I see what you did there. ;-)
This is nothing new.
And, let's face it, I bet the NSA et al have demanded more private keys be handed over to them than you'll ever know about. Where's your outrage over that?
The five eyes all use each other to spy on their own (and others) citizens, and share the information among themselves. Where's your outrage over that?
I see this as a symptom of a greater problem, but no different from what a bunch of other countries are already doing.
Until someone creates a new encryption system which isn't susceptible to MITM attacks, this will always be the case. And governments will always unashamedly insist on spying on their people, and anybody else they can find.
And, really, if the US is saying it's their right to tap into anything they want to ... how is it different when India does it?
India already forced BlackBerry to allow them to access BBM and the like.
Uncle Sam is causing as much disruption to US businesses abroad as anything, because people are realizing that American companies are effectively just extensions of the US spy apparatus -- because the PATRIOT act means they can demand whatever data they have, and you more or less have to assume they're doing it and being prevented from telling you.
Which means Indians are already being spied on by (at least) their own government AND the USA.
Do you expect there to be sympathy for an American company when a foreign government taps into them? Because I hear an awful lot of people saying they think it's perfectly OK when the US does it to foreigners.
Sounds like an awesome idea for a Kick Starter campaign.
Surely it would do almost as well as potato salad.
Doing the same to the people in charge of the NSA would also be awesome.
That is one of the many reasons I'm skeptical.
Because I can't imagine most people are going to lift a finger to help build the escape module for a bunch of rich assholes. :-P
I was merely listing the reasons why "we" might seriously be considering leaving Earth. I do not actually expect it to happen.
I think the implicit assumption is one of: we're going to completely fsck up this planet and have to leave, something else is going to threaten to fsck up this planet (and we'll have to leave), or we're going to outgrow and want to be elsewhere.
Do I think it likely we could pull it off (or even have the resources)? That I'm skeptical of.
When I see something which says "In 15 years the world will be like this", I think "My, what drivel", and move on.
From what I've seen in my lifetime, futurists and prognosticators are usually dead wrong, clueless, and writing little more than fiction.
In other words, it will require the impossible, need huge sums of money, depend on a level of consensus and cooperation unlikely to happen, and a near complete re-tooling of societies.
Blah blah blah.
Can you sue automakers for car crashes not caused by defect?
Can you sue gun makers for deaths?
Can you sue the financial industry for losses in the market?
Then why the hell is this any different? Hell, sue the fscking NSA for not having told you about it and stopped it.
Or getting as far away from us as they can.
That's purely a velocity measure, to include the energy you need to include the mass.
So it's "hogs heads * (furlongs/fornight)^2"
It's increasingly hard to tell the difference.
What would have been dismissed as fodder for paranoid people a decade or so ago, is pretty much common place these days.
Sadly, even the paranoids are all going "holy crap, have you seen this?"
Sometimes, reality is stranger than fiction (or delusion).
In theory, they're in effect.
In practice, your government simply ignores them, or strong arms the country in question.
America has ceased to be about the rule of law, just about what they want, and what they're willing to do. The laws, treaties, and demands of other countries is simply deemed irrelevant.
On an international scale, the US is more or less a rogue state which does as it pleases. And that is truly alarming, because the global message is "we don't give a fuck about you, we're Americans".
Since they decided to give it to themselves.
They've been sending in people to do snatch and grabs for years now. Then they send them to a 3rd country which can use 'enhanced' interrogation which would be illegal in the US.
And then they say that anything is legal because these people are enemy combatants who don't wear uniforms, and therefore not covered under any treaties.
Oh, and if they have to, they'll send in a drone strike in a country which hasn't authorized it, and if they happen to kill some civilians who were in the vicinity -- well, too bad that you were near someone we wanted to kill.
Seriously, have you not been paying attention? "Team America, World Police" has been a real thing now for quite some time. This is hardly the first time they've done this.
They simply don't care about things like sovereignty, and their own security needs trump everything.
You don't compress space, you bend it.
And, no, I don't actually know what that means either. :-P
Funny you should say that.
A bunch of years ago I was involved in the airline industry.
The people who did the aircraft maintenance used to howl at the notion of the "water landing" -- because until those guys did it a few years ago in the Hudson, no commercial plane had ever done it and remained intact. Which makes what they did all the more impressive.
Those seat cushions under your chair in case of a water landing? Well, let's just say within the aviation industry, they're largely regarded as wreckage markers, not flotation devices to keep you alive in the event of a water landing.
The artificial horizon for aircraft has been around for decades.
I strongly suspect most planes have one.
Failure to use it is not a technology problem.
Well, the corresponding counter point (just because) is that if people weren't relying on looking out the window ... you wouldn't have pilots landing at the wrong damned airport.
Ideally, a digital display would have big giant warning signs which say "not this airport, dummy, that one over there".
Hmmm ... define 'flick'?
My Casio solar powered watch, when I hold my forearm horizontally and turn the wrist to where I'd be able to read it ... it turns on the light.
If I hold my wrist in any other position, the light doesn't come on.
It is a damned handy feature. Just look at your watch.
Sure we do: badly.
Do you mean 'land', as in controlled descent to a specific place ... or do you mean 'land' as in 'gravity still works'?
It will eventually stop flying, but that may not be the same as 'landing'.
If it goes against that the government has decreed to be true, yes.
Ask an average Chinese citizen what happened in Tainanmen Square in April of 1989. And they will either tell you "nothing at all", or that some unruly dissidents needed to be quieted down. Their understanding of what happened doesn't match what those of us who watched it live on TV remember.
In fact, the two are nothing at all alike, if they know about it at all.
Give it another 10-15 years, and China might not be the only country applying a little revisionist history to shape people's understanding of events.
Oppressive governments like to rewrite history. It makes it easier to control the plebes.