So, just because they're researches, should they have applied for a government grant to invent some exuberant, overpriced, adhesive tape to be used in that particular experiment exclusively?
This is Canada, we need to be more cost effective and responsible with tax-payer money. Your options are scotch tape, beer, Tim Horton's coffee, moose droppings, and snow -- and in most of the country, the snow is only actually about 4 months of the year contrary to popular belief.
Sorry, there's no NASA in Canada.
Well, we have the CSA -- they kinda helped make the robotic arm in the shuttle and other things. It's not like we aren't involved in these things.
Pumped up Kicks is not the same thing as explicit descriptions of child rape
Obviously not, but it was chosen as an example of something else appalling which we don't outlaw, and which likely nobody would even try.
But what about talking about consensual activities with a 17 year old or someone just slightly under the age of consent? What about a teenager who write some fantasy erotica about a girl in his class? We've already had teenagers declared as sex offenders for receiving naughty cell phone pics of their girlfriend. At that point, it's not even "child rape", it's just two people who aren't of the age of consent -- like that never happened throughout history.
Hell, what adult male hasn't driven down the road and thought "woah, pretty girl" only to get closer and realize it's a very precocious teenager who looked more like someone in their 20's? Should that be illegal now? (It was especially troubling when the "visible thong" was trendy.)
If it is not okay for an adult to have sex with a young child, why is it okay to have an explicit written account of an adult having sex with a young child?
If it's not OK to shoot people, why do we have video games which depict this? If you can't steal cars, why do we have video games called "Grand Theft Auto"?
As you said, it is really difficult to draw the line.
Or phrased a little more generically, how does society balance the freedoms of people against the risk those freedoms may cause to others?
And *that* is a very old question for which there isn't really an easy answer, which was my entire point. Especially when you start factoring in political or religious agendas in which people don't like certain freedoms. Sodomy laws are a fine example of this -- do you know in some places it might be illegal for a married couple to have anal sex?
You can slide through a lot of shades of grey in many of these cases. And, like with technology, people try to pass these laws and end up making them over-broad and useless.
And, for the record, I don't claim to have any answers to these questions -- and I'm sure as hell not advocating for child pornography. But the devil is definitely in the details for a lot of these things.
Why I rarely bother to lock my car. Granted its an older model. Truth is, ya, a determined theif will steal the car about as quickly as I can unlock the door and start it normally with the key.
A truly motivated and resourceful criminal would just show up with a tow truck. Nobody would even look at a tow-truck taking away a car.
But, the locks keep the casual/incompetent ones away.
Though, years ago I used to have a Jeep... my friend pointed out that locking it was futile because it was basically a tent on wheels. Anybody who knows about how to do the soft-top could just unzip it. Anybody who didn't could simply cut it.
Put differently, if instead of wanting to outlaw written descriptions of child sexual abuse, the MP wanted to outlaw videos and pictures portraying it (which is already outlawed), would your argument be different?
Well, to play devil's advocate here...
In the case of videos and pictures showing it, there is a real, genuine physical assault and a crime happening. In the case of written stories, there's no actual people involved. It's something which, until proven otherwise is fiction.
And in the case of starting to outlaw fiction because it depicts things which we may not like, it starts to get a little creepy in terms of what the state can/should control.
So, to use a slightly more neutral example, take the lyrics of Pumped up Kicks which is about someone with violent thoughts.
Do we outlaw such things? The rationale would more or less be the same I think, outlawing something which describes potentially dangerous/illegal behavior but nothing has actually happened yet.
It just seems when you start outlawing thoughts and ideas you're getting into some truly grey areas. Which crimes is having written stories about merit being outlawed? Only child abuse? Murder? Robbery? Jay walking? Littering?
This just seems like one of those many well-meaning but entirely misguided attempts at a law which goes beyond the scope of what laws are usually allowed to do.
Hell, I believe it would make the classic book Lolita illegal, would it not?
Total time, less than an hour from scanning my mouth to implanted tooth. I already had an implant grafted to my jawbone, so this was just the crown, but still, I was very impressed.
Wow, the crown I have got sent out to the lab and took a few weeks of having a temporary crown.
Not sure about why these things get such odd names for people to use... but years ago when I still coded for a living, if we were working on something, we specifically gave it a codename which a) the marketing guys would never ever use, and b) which made it not so obvious what it was.
We used to find that if the sales guys caught whiff of something, or liked the working name, it would end up being used in customer presentations and generally cause problems as they started selling something that hadn't been released (or even coded) yet.
So project anchovy or project firkin tended to keep them away. This was done throughout development, and I believe was actually a policy.
As to why Ubuntu comes up with such odd names... that I can't even speak to. Because "Zitty Zebra" or "Punk-Rock Platypus" never seem to make sense as official names to me.
I wonder if this means that someday soon us passengers will be able to listen to music on our iphone / droid or read on our ipad / nook / fire during take off and landing?
I think other regulations will likely preclude that.
The reason they only let you wear headphones connected to their system during takeoff and landing is to be guaranteed you can hear them if they need to make an announcement or in case of emergency.
If you can't hear them, it becomes a safety issue.
So when can I start using my iPad during "all phases of the flight"?
Probably never. The last time I flew I wasn't even allowed to have my iPad in the seat pocket during takeoff due to some unspecified fear it might burst into flames -- and I'm not kidding. They made me put it back into my luggage in the overhead bin.
4chan is one of the oldest sites on the internet same thing with slashdot and amazon great to see sites like these still around, going strong and making headlines.
Ummm... what? 4chan started in 2003. That's pretty much a decade after some of us started using Netscape.
And internet addressing goes back well before that (because the Internet is not the World Wide Web).
There's simply no way 4Chan can be one of the oldest Internet sites. There's just too many years of the internet before 2003.
I know that is the first thing that most kids want to play with on a tablet/smartphone is the fart app.
And the sheer number of fart apps out there tells me that kids have correctly identified that farts are hilarious!! A friend's sister teaches elementary school, and she assures me that farts are the funniest thing ever.
Though, I must confess, I deleted my fart apps within the first week; but I'm betting a fair few people still use theirs.:-P
My HP software uses a newer version of the same software (branded as HP Simple Pass 2010 Identity Protection powered by AuthenTech), which supposedly is not vulnerable.
Or at least, not as vulnerable.
Throw enough resources at it, and most forms of security are vulnerable. Social engineer it, and it's even easier.
so how long has this been in use before somebody noticed the passwords were effectively PLAIN TEXT??
You know, this kind of stuff happens all of the time -- because people are lazy, under pressure from the boss, or just plain stupid.
Several years ago, I was helping to install some software which was supposed to go onto the machine in the DMZ and reach back into the firewall to access a database.
It turns out the software stored the admin password in cleartext in a registry key (zero attempts to obfuscate, let alone encrypt). I started shouting this quite loudly to anybody who would listen, and tried to explain why this was ludicrous.
Eventually I got told it was a low risk, and that I should shut up. Sometimes, management overrules you on these things.
Sadly, I'm betting someone brought this to someone's attention, and got told to STFU.
Being asked to supply a sample is a loss of freedom how? American legal rights... like shooting each other, suing each other silly.
Um, no. This in America is unreasonable search and seizure, and people have a presumption of innocence.
In Canada there's a reasonable expectation we don't get searched for no good reason, and that comes from British common law.
This is intended to keep the government a little further away and not be able to crap all over you.
Do you really believe that this wouldn't be infringing on your rights for the police to make you submit a DNA sample to prove you didn't commit a crime? Governments tend to collect for one purpose, and then retain indefinitely and use for any other purpose they see fit.
Unless you have evidence to suggest I did this, I'm sure as hell not going to voluntarily submit to this kind of testing without being compelled. And, quite frankly, "because we've ran out of places to look" isn't going to be a good enough reason and will get you told to piss off.
So maybe you think it wouldn't violate your rights to have your DNA on file just because they ran out of places to look. But I wouldn't give it to them voluntarily.
I read this "All data gathered will be destroyed after the match with this particular murder" and immediately think bullshit.
As a rule, once they have this, it never seem to go away.
I would never submit to this unless I was required to -- this is a fishing expedition. Anybody who submits is probably innocent, and anybody who refuses is going to be treated as if they're guilty with something to hide.
Yes, this is terrible. But asking everyone to submit exclusionary DNA because they've ran out of places to look... well, I find that to be a really scary precedent.
The next step of course would be to just simply have everyone's DNA on file just in case they ever needed it.
Why is anything that has an obvious physical analog even patentable just because it's implemented on a computer?
Well, I will flippantly throw out that a lot of us have been saying for years that the patent system has become "A system for doing something obvious, but with a computer".
There are a lot of things which are directly analogous to real world examples of things, but magically putting "on a computer" changes all of that. And they keep granting the patents.
I'm sure I've seen a TV commercial for this. The kid is trying to open his dad's phone, and dad walks down the stairs and picks up the phone and it unlocks for him.
Wish I could remember who did this, but it seems like it's already in production by someone.
Heck, my XBox can sign me in based on the facial recognition. Just stand there and wave, and it knows which player I am.
This doesn't really sound like it is a novel idea, just a specific solution to something people have either been doing, or talking about doing, for quite some time.
It's an insecure landscape to be sure - but would you expect anything less from a young and revolutionary idea?
No, it's exactly what I'd expect from a young and revolutionary idea -- not yet fully fleshed out, missing a lot of things it really needs, and nowhere ready to be trusted with anything which has real value. In other words, something I'd steer clear of, which is all I'm saying.
It sounds more like a proof of concept than something I'd entrust money to.
And, being on the internet, people either don't think critically of it, or don't understand that you've more or less handed a bag full of money to someone you don't really know and have no business trusting in the first place.
The difference between the real world analogy and the internet one, is I don't walk into a store in a strip mall with a hand-painted sign which says "Bob's Happy Fun Bank" and hand them my money. Apparently, on the internet, that's exactly what we do -- even if Bob didn't rip you off directly, he left the money sitting around in a big heap in the back room and didn't lock the door.
If I have my cash in a bank, well, it's insured and covered under a lot of legal regulations. Since these guys aren't doing any of that, you're asking an entity to hold onto your cash for you, without any safeguards.
I've no doubt that BitCoint is cryptographically sexy and secure. But that's kind of moot from a practical measure if this is something which keeps happening.
I'm sorry, but "the system" is so ad-hoc as to make trading in "the currency" insecure by design. It could be made more secure, but it hasn't yet. And since it's not covered under any regulations nor is it being monitored for shady stuff... I fail to see how people can act like it's "secure", and that if it's not secure, it's the fault of "the system". There's just too many gaps that you need to leave up to someone to get it right.
But you seem insistent on discussing this as if it takes place in a vacuum from the method of exchange, which it clearly doesn't.
I really do think BitCoin is a cool idea. But, like so many cool ideas, it has a little growing to do before I'd assign any level of trust to it and actually use it for my own stuff. In fact, it would have to be as robust and secure as the actual banking system itself for that to happen. I'm just not hearing that it's anywhere near there.
Does an uneducated whelp have to be the first to post in all of these? BitCoin isn't insecure - the site holding them was.
Ergo, the whole landscape in which BitCoin operates is insecure. Ergo, BitCoin is essentially insecure.
Sure, the BitCoin itself might be theoretically safe. But if untrusted sites can get into the game, the whole damned thing becomes a joke. Because, clearly this awesome security you're so excited about doesn't work worth a fucking damn when it comes down to it.
Or are you somehow putting forward the idea that something secure passed around in horribly insecure ways somehow still remains as secure? Because I don't follow the logic. The whole system is only as strong as its weakest link, and it sounds like it's pretty damned easy to put in weak links.
This isn't a "real" banking system. It's something else. And, as a result and given the number of these virtual heists... I wouldn't put my money into BitCoin because I don't see a basis for trust, and I'm betting you've not sunk your life savings into it either.
So, big deal, they didn't break the cryptography used in BitCoin -- they just went around it and made it irrelevant.
Face it, there is no way to keep money safe in this world except to spend it.
Maybe not absolutely 100% safe, sure.
But treating random internet sites as if they're proper banks with all of the built in safeguards isn't really a step in the right direction.
As the poster I replied to said, this is about who you trust in the exchange. In this case, it sounds like there's no reason to actually put any trust in them.
In this case, I'd have to say the "real" banking system is far more trustworthy. Some guy who knocked up a web site and thinks he's an "exchange"? Well, that's just asking for troubles.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, that's a lot to say every time ... "Oi! Laddie, get me the fucking Sellotape ya yank-sassenach fannybaws!"
Actually, never mind -- I think I've heard one of my Scottish friends say something like that before. ;-)
This is Canada, we need to be more cost effective and responsible with tax-payer money. Your options are scotch tape, beer, Tim Horton's coffee, moose droppings, and snow -- and in most of the country, the snow is only actually about 4 months of the year contrary to popular belief.
Well, we have the CSA -- they kinda helped make the robotic arm in the shuttle and other things. It's not like we aren't involved in these things.
Obviously not, but it was chosen as an example of something else appalling which we don't outlaw, and which likely nobody would even try.
But what about talking about consensual activities with a 17 year old or someone just slightly under the age of consent? What about a teenager who write some fantasy erotica about a girl in his class? We've already had teenagers declared as sex offenders for receiving naughty cell phone pics of their girlfriend. At that point, it's not even "child rape", it's just two people who aren't of the age of consent -- like that never happened throughout history.
Hell, what adult male hasn't driven down the road and thought "woah, pretty girl" only to get closer and realize it's a very precocious teenager who looked more like someone in their 20's? Should that be illegal now? (It was especially troubling when the "visible thong" was trendy.)
If it's not OK to shoot people, why do we have video games which depict this? If you can't steal cars, why do we have video games called "Grand Theft Auto"?
As you said, it is really difficult to draw the line.
And *that* is a very old question for which there isn't really an easy answer, which was my entire point. Especially when you start factoring in political or religious agendas in which people don't like certain freedoms. Sodomy laws are a fine example of this -- do you know in some places it might be illegal for a married couple to have anal sex?
You can slide through a lot of shades of grey in many of these cases. And, like with technology, people try to pass these laws and end up making them over-broad and useless.
And, for the record, I don't claim to have any answers to these questions -- and I'm sure as hell not advocating for child pornography. But the devil is definitely in the details for a lot of these things.
A truly motivated and resourceful criminal would just show up with a tow truck. Nobody would even look at a tow-truck taking away a car.
But, the locks keep the casual/incompetent ones away.
Though, years ago I used to have a Jeep ... my friend pointed out that locking it was futile because it was basically a tent on wheels. Anybody who knows about how to do the soft-top could just unzip it. Anybody who didn't could simply cut it.
After that, I stopped locking it.
Well, to play devil's advocate here ...
In the case of videos and pictures showing it, there is a real, genuine physical assault and a crime happening. In the case of written stories, there's no actual people involved. It's something which, until proven otherwise is fiction.
And in the case of starting to outlaw fiction because it depicts things which we may not like, it starts to get a little creepy in terms of what the state can/should control.
So, to use a slightly more neutral example, take the lyrics of Pumped up Kicks which is about someone with violent thoughts.
Do we outlaw such things? The rationale would more or less be the same I think, outlawing something which describes potentially dangerous/illegal behavior but nothing has actually happened yet.
It just seems when you start outlawing thoughts and ideas you're getting into some truly grey areas. Which crimes is having written stories about merit being outlawed? Only child abuse? Murder? Robbery? Jay walking? Littering?
This just seems like one of those many well-meaning but entirely misguided attempts at a law which goes beyond the scope of what laws are usually allowed to do.
Hell, I believe it would make the classic book Lolita illegal, would it not?
Wow, the crown I have got sent out to the lab and took a few weeks of having a temporary crown.
That's actually fairly impressive.
And, most importantly, long before the bacteria can do anything with it, the damage to the fish, coral, and everything else is done.
Though, I'm sure some people will say that since these bacteria will eventually clean things up we can spill and not worry about it.
So if I was there as a tourist, would I get arrested?
Or is somehow putting your island into a video game now sedition or something?
TFA is pretty slim, but I'm having a hard time imagine what law was broken.
Not sure about why these things get such odd names for people to use ... but years ago when I still coded for a living, if we were working on something, we specifically gave it a codename which a) the marketing guys would never ever use, and b) which made it not so obvious what it was.
We used to find that if the sales guys caught whiff of something, or liked the working name, it would end up being used in customer presentations and generally cause problems as they started selling something that hadn't been released (or even coded) yet.
So project anchovy or project firkin tended to keep them away. This was done throughout development, and I believe was actually a policy.
As to why Ubuntu comes up with such odd names ... that I can't even speak to. Because "Zitty Zebra" or "Punk-Rock Platypus" never seem to make sense as official names to me.
LOL, something like that. I'm also pretty sure I've not seen any news stories about them actually bursting into flames.
I'm not even sure what you would have to do to a powered off electronic device to make it just burst into flames.
At the time I remember thinking "what the hell are you talking about?".
But I doubt it will take the form of fixing the patent system.
Likely just calling in favors to be sure he gets his phone first.
I think other regulations will likely preclude that.
The reason they only let you wear headphones connected to their system during takeoff and landing is to be guaranteed you can hear them if they need to make an announcement or in case of emergency.
If you can't hear them, it becomes a safety issue.
Probably never. The last time I flew I wasn't even allowed to have my iPad in the seat pocket during takeoff due to some unspecified fear it might burst into flames -- and I'm not kidding. They made me put it back into my luggage in the overhead bin.
Ummm ... what? 4chan started in 2003. That's pretty much a decade after some of us started using Netscape.
And internet addressing goes back well before that (because the Internet is not the World Wide Web).
There's simply no way 4Chan can be one of the oldest Internet sites. There's just too many years of the internet before 2003.
And the sheer number of fart apps out there tells me that kids have correctly identified that farts are hilarious!! A friend's sister teaches elementary school, and she assures me that farts are the funniest thing ever.
Though, I must confess, I deleted my fart apps within the first week; but I'm betting a fair few people still use theirs. :-P
Or at least, not as vulnerable.
Throw enough resources at it, and most forms of security are vulnerable. Social engineer it, and it's even easier.
You know, this kind of stuff happens all of the time -- because people are lazy, under pressure from the boss, or just plain stupid.
Several years ago, I was helping to install some software which was supposed to go onto the machine in the DMZ and reach back into the firewall to access a database.
It turns out the software stored the admin password in cleartext in a registry key (zero attempts to obfuscate, let alone encrypt). I started shouting this quite loudly to anybody who would listen, and tried to explain why this was ludicrous.
Eventually I got told it was a low risk, and that I should shut up. Sometimes, management overrules you on these things.
Sadly, I'm betting someone brought this to someone's attention, and got told to STFU.
Um, no. This in America is unreasonable search and seizure, and people have a presumption of innocence.
In Canada there's a reasonable expectation we don't get searched for no good reason, and that comes from British common law.
This is intended to keep the government a little further away and not be able to crap all over you.
Do you really believe that this wouldn't be infringing on your rights for the police to make you submit a DNA sample to prove you didn't commit a crime? Governments tend to collect for one purpose, and then retain indefinitely and use for any other purpose they see fit.
Unless you have evidence to suggest I did this, I'm sure as hell not going to voluntarily submit to this kind of testing without being compelled. And, quite frankly, "because we've ran out of places to look" isn't going to be a good enough reason and will get you told to piss off.
So maybe you think it wouldn't violate your rights to have your DNA on file just because they ran out of places to look. But I wouldn't give it to them voluntarily.
I read this "All data gathered will be destroyed after the match with this particular murder" and immediately think bullshit.
As a rule, once they have this, it never seem to go away.
I would never submit to this unless I was required to -- this is a fishing expedition. Anybody who submits is probably innocent, and anybody who refuses is going to be treated as if they're guilty with something to hide.
Yes, this is terrible. But asking everyone to submit exclusionary DNA because they've ran out of places to look ... well, I find that to be a really scary precedent.
The next step of course would be to just simply have everyone's DNA on file just in case they ever needed it.
LOL, I'm not convinced most C level executives have anything but business experience any more.
Knowing the specifics of the industry you're in isn't as important. Not by a long shot.
Well, I will flippantly throw out that a lot of us have been saying for years that the patent system has become "A system for doing something obvious, but with a computer".
There are a lot of things which are directly analogous to real world examples of things, but magically putting "on a computer" changes all of that. And they keep granting the patents.
I'm sure I've seen a TV commercial for this. The kid is trying to open his dad's phone, and dad walks down the stairs and picks up the phone and it unlocks for him.
Wish I could remember who did this, but it seems like it's already in production by someone.
Heck, my XBox can sign me in based on the facial recognition. Just stand there and wave, and it knows which player I am.
This doesn't really sound like it is a novel idea, just a specific solution to something people have either been doing, or talking about doing, for quite some time.
No, it's exactly what I'd expect from a young and revolutionary idea -- not yet fully fleshed out, missing a lot of things it really needs, and nowhere ready to be trusted with anything which has real value. In other words, something I'd steer clear of, which is all I'm saying.
It sounds more like a proof of concept than something I'd entrust money to.
And, being on the internet, people either don't think critically of it, or don't understand that you've more or less handed a bag full of money to someone you don't really know and have no business trusting in the first place.
The difference between the real world analogy and the internet one, is I don't walk into a store in a strip mall with a hand-painted sign which says "Bob's Happy Fun Bank" and hand them my money. Apparently, on the internet, that's exactly what we do -- even if Bob didn't rip you off directly, he left the money sitting around in a big heap in the back room and didn't lock the door.
If I have my cash in a bank, well, it's insured and covered under a lot of legal regulations. Since these guys aren't doing any of that, you're asking an entity to hold onto your cash for you, without any safeguards.
I've no doubt that BitCoint is cryptographically sexy and secure. But that's kind of moot from a practical measure if this is something which keeps happening.
I'm sorry, but "the system" is so ad-hoc as to make trading in "the currency" insecure by design. It could be made more secure, but it hasn't yet. And since it's not covered under any regulations nor is it being monitored for shady stuff ... I fail to see how people can act like it's "secure", and that if it's not secure, it's the fault of "the system". There's just too many gaps that you need to leave up to someone to get it right.
But you seem insistent on discussing this as if it takes place in a vacuum from the method of exchange, which it clearly doesn't.
I really do think BitCoin is a cool idea. But, like so many cool ideas, it has a little growing to do before I'd assign any level of trust to it and actually use it for my own stuff. In fact, it would have to be as robust and secure as the actual banking system itself for that to happen. I'm just not hearing that it's anywhere near there.
Ergo, the whole landscape in which BitCoin operates is insecure. Ergo, BitCoin is essentially insecure.
Sure, the BitCoin itself might be theoretically safe. But if untrusted sites can get into the game, the whole damned thing becomes a joke. Because, clearly this awesome security you're so excited about doesn't work worth a fucking damn when it comes down to it.
Or are you somehow putting forward the idea that something secure passed around in horribly insecure ways somehow still remains as secure? Because I don't follow the logic. The whole system is only as strong as its weakest link, and it sounds like it's pretty damned easy to put in weak links.
This isn't a "real" banking system. It's something else. And, as a result and given the number of these virtual heists ... I wouldn't put my money into BitCoin because I don't see a basis for trust, and I'm betting you've not sunk your life savings into it either.
So, big deal, they didn't break the cryptography used in BitCoin -- they just went around it and made it irrelevant.
Maybe not absolutely 100% safe, sure.
But treating random internet sites as if they're proper banks with all of the built in safeguards isn't really a step in the right direction.
As the poster I replied to said, this is about who you trust in the exchange. In this case, it sounds like there's no reason to actually put any trust in them.
In this case, I'd have to say the "real" banking system is far more trustworthy. Some guy who knocked up a web site and thinks he's an "exchange"? Well, that's just asking for troubles.