Siri doesn't just do search, in fact that's the smallest feature it does and no one cares about.
What Siri does is let you interact completely with your phone, send/reply to texts, find hookers, schedule meetings/events, check the weather, etc.
And it does it naturally, e.g. for the weather you don't have to say "what is the current weather forecast/temperature" but instead you can say "do i need a jacket today" or "do i need a coat" or "should i bring an umbrella" or "will i freeze my balls off this morning" or "is it cold?" etc.
But Vlingo on the Android does that too. I don't know how well it interacts with the calendar -- I've never used that particular function -- but it can be used to activate weather apps, send/reply to texts, use the GPS navigation, and command any other Android app. It handles natural speaking syntax, too.
I honestly don't see what the fuss is about. Maybe Siri is a little smarter? Still Android has options that are almost as good, and putting Siri forth as the next generation of some hot new capability just rings hollow.
Not to get into too much detail, but I believe that Goddard writes the command upload scripts which are then sent to EROS for upload.
I'm a scientist, not an engineer, so I could be wrong about how all the bits and bytes are made. But I don't remember Goddard having an upload station of their own.
Yes, Landsat 7 is controlled from Sioux Falls. But every downlink station (and we have over a dozen of them, including one in China) has the ability to communicate with the satellite to trigger a download of recorded imagery. I assume that's all the hackers did, which means all they would be able to do is wipe some imagery out of the archive. That's a hair-raising scenario for us but not significant for most people.
Only EROS has the ability to upload flight commands to the satellite. That's not to say that Svalbard couldn't, they just don't have the software and one would hope they don't have the documentation needed to form the command syntax. But if they had those things and a hacker took control of them, they could burn the satellite into the atmosphere or send it careening around in its orbital neighborhood. Chances of it hitting another satellite and breaking into a million disaster-causing pieces are minor but not zero.
This is a scary news story for us. I'm interested in seeing the full report when it's finally released.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that despite the ravings of TV pundits, the US is more free than China will ever be, market included.
You are wrong. You are wrong de-facto, as China attracts more and more investment capital and talent (the same way USA used to back in 19 and beginning of 20th centuries) and USA is losing it.
Why would you correlate increased corporate activity with more freedom? It seems to me that the opposite is true. Especially in China, where corporations willingly help the government impose their totalitarian policies.
This just in -- Frederick Francissimo Franco is still dead, and Ron Paul is still stupid and insane. More of these breaking news bulletins as events warrant. Now back to you, Marsha.
I've seen his other plans. We're talking about 5 departments vanishing. That part of his plan is stupid and insane.
If someone says, "Everyone should get vaccinated for measles and wear their underwear on their heads", then I'm not going to spend much time commenting on their sensible vaccination plan. I'll focus on the insanity.
If you want to make a dent, use something larger than a jeweler's hammer.
The $12 billion saved by axing these 5 departments is nothing compared to the big ticket items. Medicare has a budget of $793 billion. Defense has a budget of $689. Decreasing both of those by only 10% would be more than enough to fund all 5 departments. If you want to make a dent, cut them both in half.
Social security has a budget of $701 billion, but it brings in $865 million in revenue, so it isn't a budget problem. But sure, cut it too if you want.
I don't know why this is so difficult for Republicans to understand. Bank robbers rob banks because that's where the money is. If you want to cut the budget, you cut it where the budget is fat; that's where the money is. Ron Paul zeroing out 5 departments to save $12 billion is like an armed robber holding up a kid with a lemonade stand. It's cowardly and stupid and isn't going to solve a damn thing.
Huh? Railroads and airports are heavily subsidized by the government. Government has nothing to do with the manufacture of trucks (unless they're american built; GM needed government help to keep from going under), but trucks aren't worth much if you don't have roads.
The only completely non-goverment means of transportation are the sea lanes. Good luck if you're not living on the coast.
Not to mention the other stuff that government does, like regulation to keep rivers from being poisonous and the air from choking people to death, or police forces that keep the hungry from storming your corporation's factories and headquarters like a plague of zombies, or firefighters that keep your corporate buildings from burning down, or an army that kept us from being part of the Axis empire, or power generation without which your factories couldn't run, or basic research that designed the technology that you depend upon.
Given the choice between no corporations and no government, I'd much rather live in a world without corporations. A world without government would be a dark age hell hole. A world without corporations would be, at worst, like soviet Russia -- not somewhere I want to live, but at least it wouldn't be the dark ages.
He was not unique. I can attest that all Catholics are indoctrinated this way. It's been said that the quickest way to become an atheist is to grow up in a Catholic household, because of this kind of religious mindscrew.
Mr. Shatner, you (not the characters you play) give the impression of a Byronic figure, a man of insatiable appetites and open-minded sense of fun. I mean, very few people have both James Kirk and King Bacchus in their ouvre.
So I'm just curious. Have you been as sexually adventurous as your outgoing persona implies? Any bisexual curiousity or strange fetishes in your past? A 'yes' or a 'no' answer is fine, I won't press for details if you're uncomfortable telling them.
You can get a cheap rock tumbler for $100 or less. Pull the platters out of your drives and put them in the tumbler along with some coarse grit pellets and turn it on for a few days. For extra security throw some crushed up magnets in also. You'll strip the magnetic parts right off the disk and be left with shiny metallic platters devoid of information...if they don't disintegrate completely.
To a neutrino, space and the planet Earth are almost equally transparent. The neutrinos from OPERA and the neutrinos from SN1987A should be travelling at the same c, and they (apparently) aren't.
The one real difference is that the planet has a gravitational field. That could support some theories which suggest that neutrinos are able to take shortcuts through extra dimensions, but only in the presence of a gravity field. That result would still make relativity choke and turn blue, but it might make sense.
Either way, it doesn't look like a tweaking of the value of c is likely.
Having neutrinos fly at 'true c' rather than a lower 'apparent c' isn't a good solution, because it doesn't take in account neutrino bursts from supernova 1987A. The neutrinos from that supernova were detected only four hours before the light from it. That's explainable with what we know about internal stellar processes. But if the neutrinos were flying FTL then they should have arrived four years earlier.
The most likely explanation for the CERN results (apart from experimental error) is that neutrinos are tachyonic -- they have imaginary mass, and naturally fly faster than light. The higher their energy, the closer to lightspeed they travel.
That's not a trivial situation. To use a technical term, it breaks relativity into itty bitty pieces. We will have to change a lot of theories around. But it's unlikely that the value of c is going to change.
Um, no he hasn't. Not that I've seen. Not here. The only 'sorry' in his answers is, "Sorry, I don't own a Guy Fawkes mask." If he had used the word 'sorry' I would be much more charitable.
He did say that he has regrets. Regret and sorrow are not the same thing. One can be regretful that they miscalculated and were caught. Sorrow implies empathy and actual emotion. That's all I wanted to see from him.
Re:Without remorse there is no rehabilitation.
on
Kevin Mitnick Answers
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· Score: 1
Hah! 'Amoral' is an excellent definition for my webcomic. Please, feel free to complain about it in as many venues as you wish!
Re:Without remorse there is no rehabilitation.
on
Kevin Mitnick Answers
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· Score: 1
While what he did wasn't the most ethical thing to do, I don't think it in any way qualifies as having done "some of the most amoral and harmful acts in modern computing history" by any measure. You've just got an axe to grind because you were personally affected. If you weren't, you'd probably care much less.
That's a fair cop. I am absolutely biased about this, and I'm not going to try to pretend otherwise. And my quote about 'some of the most amoral acts' is outrageous hyperbole, I admit it.
But Kevin was a bad guy, and I want him to admit that before I'll believe he's a good guy now.
No. Legally he served his time, and that's it. What you're talking about is morality which has absolutely nothing to do with the law.
What I'm talking about is empathy. He's saying that he broke into computer systems, stole some information and terrorized them, but he didn't make a profit on it so it's ethically okay. That's bullshit. It's amoral. It's a complete lack of empathy, and a telling sign of a sociopath.
I don't think he's a hero, nor a much of a villain. He's just some guy that messed with a few things he shouldn't have and paid rather too much for it. He's just one member of a very large list of people.
Except this one member gets a free Q&A session on Slashdot to promote his new book, and is lauded as a paid speaker at hacker conventions. That's a much shorter list. A good segment of the computer geek community sees this sociopath as a hero, and that is a bad reflection on us.
Without remorse there is no rehabilitation.
on
Kevin Mitnick Answers
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
Huh. I wasn't expecting my question to actually be chosen.
In any event, Kevin shows no remorse for being a criminal, which means he essentially still is one. Time served and a stamp of approval by the white hats doesn't matter; what matters is that a person grows from their experiences and becomes better. I see no evidence that Kevin is a better man than he was.
The people defending him should take note that their hero is a crook. And he always will be in my eyes, until I see some contrition and some remorse for what he's done.
You wouldn't stop it. You'd put it in a stable orbit around the Lagrange point, just as we do with sun-observing satellites now.
It may (or may not) be a bad idea, but it's not an infeasible one.
Re:Hi, Kevin. I'm one of your victims.
on
Ask Kevin Mitnick
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· Score: 1
It's interesting, then, that there are over a dozen Anonymous Cowards defending him in response to my post. Sure looks like some people regard him as a role model.
Look, this incident was a long time ago and I've recovered completely from it both emotionally and financially. I just hate seeing the idol worship of bad people. Kevin Mitnick is a bad person. He shouldn't be given a Slashdot 'Ask' thread, he should be shunned. His bad reputation damages all those who associate with him, and Slashdot is opening itself up to that.
What might change my mind about that? Well, if Mitnick feels guilt and remorse for his crimes, I'll take that as a sign that he's grown and become a better person. And that's what I wanted to ask him; how well does he sleep at night? If the answer is 'sometimes not well', then I'll gain a measure of respect for the man and it won't bother me as much when I see people fawning over him like some kind of celebrity.
But until I see that little glint of humility, all I can do is shake my head sadly at all those defending him. You losers sure know how to miss a point.
Re:Hi, Kevin. I'm one of your victims.
on
Ask Kevin Mitnick
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· Score: 4, Interesting
As soon as I was told about it I canceled the card. Which was a hardship for me, considering I had just gone through a divorce and I was in bad financial straits at the time. He didn't hurt me much, but he frightened me plenty. There are others who were hurt far worse.
It frosts my chaps that this guy is treated as a hero by the hacking community. But I suppose people get the heroes they deserve. I was just wondering how Kevin feels about that.
Hi, Kevin. I'm one of your victims.
on
Ask Kevin Mitnick
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Hi, Kevin. I was told that my credit card information was among the thousands you stole from Netcom, way back in the day.
I won't ask you what you did with the credit card info you stole, that might cause problems with self-incrimination. I wouldn't want that, oh no.
So let me ask this: How does it feel to be a 'respected' member of the security community now, after having frightened and hurt so many people back then? How does it feel to have the hacker community regard you as a hero when you've done some of the most amoral and harmful acts in modern computing history? I guess what I'm really asking is, how well do you sleep at night? Honestly.
Slashdot Mirror
They were spotted horse spotters who were spotting walls with spotted horses they had spotted.
Siri doesn't just do search, in fact that's the smallest feature it does and no one cares about.
What Siri does is let you interact completely with your phone, send/reply to texts, find hookers, schedule meetings/events, check the weather, etc.
And it does it naturally, e.g. for the weather you don't have to say "what is the current weather forecast/temperature" but instead you can say "do i need a jacket today" or "do i need a coat" or "should i bring an umbrella" or "will i freeze my balls off this morning" or "is it cold?" etc.
But Vlingo on the Android does that too. I don't know how well it interacts with the calendar -- I've never used that particular function -- but it can be used to activate weather apps, send/reply to texts, use the GPS navigation, and command any other Android app. It handles natural speaking syntax, too.
I honestly don't see what the fuss is about. Maybe Siri is a little smarter? Still Android has options that are almost as good, and putting Siri forth as the next generation of some hot new capability just rings hollow.
Maybe I'll ask Vlingo to explain it to me.
The security at EROS is quite good. :) Svalbard was hacked, not us.
Not to get into too much detail, but I believe that Goddard writes the command upload scripts which are then sent to EROS for upload.
I'm a scientist, not an engineer, so I could be wrong about how all the bits and bytes are made. But I don't remember Goddard having an upload station of their own.
I work on the Landsat project.
Yes, Landsat 7 is controlled from Sioux Falls. But every downlink station (and we have over a dozen of them, including one in China) has the ability to communicate with the satellite to trigger a download of recorded imagery. I assume that's all the hackers did, which means all they would be able to do is wipe some imagery out of the archive. That's a hair-raising scenario for us but not significant for most people.
Only EROS has the ability to upload flight commands to the satellite. That's not to say that Svalbard couldn't, they just don't have the software and one would hope they don't have the documentation needed to form the command syntax. But if they had those things and a hacker took control of them, they could burn the satellite into the atmosphere or send it careening around in its orbital neighborhood. Chances of it hitting another satellite and breaking into a million disaster-causing pieces are minor but not zero.
This is a scary news story for us. I'm interested in seeing the full report when it's finally released.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that despite the ravings of TV pundits, the US is more free than China will ever be, market included.
You are wrong. You are wrong de-facto, as China attracts more and more investment capital and talent (the same way USA used to back in 19 and beginning of 20th centuries) and USA is losing it.
Why would you correlate increased corporate activity with more freedom? It seems to me that the opposite is true. Especially in China, where corporations willingly help the government impose their totalitarian policies.
This just in -- Frederick Francissimo Franco is still dead, and Ron Paul is still stupid and insane. More of these breaking news bulletins as events warrant. Now back to you, Marsha.
I've seen his other plans. We're talking about 5 departments vanishing. That part of his plan is stupid and insane.
If someone says, "Everyone should get vaccinated for measles and wear their underwear on their heads", then I'm not going to spend much time commenting on their sensible vaccination plan. I'll focus on the insanity.
If you want to make a dent, use something larger than a jeweler's hammer.
The $12 billion saved by axing these 5 departments is nothing compared to the big ticket items. Medicare has a budget of $793 billion. Defense has a budget of $689. Decreasing both of those by only 10% would be more than enough to fund all 5 departments. If you want to make a dent, cut them both in half.
Social security has a budget of $701 billion, but it brings in $865 million in revenue, so it isn't a budget problem. But sure, cut it too if you want.
I don't know why this is so difficult for Republicans to understand. Bank robbers rob banks because that's where the money is. If you want to cut the budget, you cut it where the budget is fat; that's where the money is. Ron Paul zeroing out 5 departments to save $12 billion is like an armed robber holding up a kid with a lemonade stand. It's cowardly and stupid and isn't going to solve a damn thing.
Huh? Railroads and airports are heavily subsidized by the government. Government has nothing to do with the manufacture of trucks (unless they're american built; GM needed government help to keep from going under), but trucks aren't worth much if you don't have roads.
The only completely non-goverment means of transportation are the sea lanes. Good luck if you're not living on the coast.
Not to mention the other stuff that government does, like regulation to keep rivers from being poisonous and the air from choking people to death, or police forces that keep the hungry from storming your corporation's factories and headquarters like a plague of zombies, or firefighters that keep your corporate buildings from burning down, or an army that kept us from being part of the Axis empire, or power generation without which your factories couldn't run, or basic research that designed the technology that you depend upon.
Given the choice between no corporations and no government, I'd much rather live in a world without corporations. A world without government would be a dark age hell hole. A world without corporations would be, at worst, like soviet Russia -- not somewhere I want to live, but at least it wouldn't be the dark ages.
I hope the Onion parodies this. The photoshopped picket signs might be worth a laugh.
"DAMNATION? THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT."
He was not unique. I can attest that all Catholics are indoctrinated this way. It's been said that the quickest way to become an atheist is to grow up in a Catholic household, because of this kind of religious mindscrew.
Mr. Shatner, you (not the characters you play) give the impression of a Byronic figure, a man of insatiable appetites and open-minded sense of fun. I mean, very few people have both James Kirk and King Bacchus in their ouvre.
So I'm just curious. Have you been as sexually adventurous as your outgoing persona implies? Any bisexual curiousity or strange fetishes in your past? A 'yes' or a 'no' answer is fine, I won't press for details if you're uncomfortable telling them.
You can get a cheap rock tumbler for $100 or less. Pull the platters out of your drives and put them in the tumbler along with some coarse grit pellets and turn it on for a few days. For extra security throw some crushed up magnets in also. You'll strip the magnetic parts right off the disk and be left with shiny metallic platters devoid of information...if they don't disintegrate completely.
To a neutrino, space and the planet Earth are almost equally transparent. The neutrinos from OPERA and the neutrinos from SN1987A should be travelling at the same c, and they (apparently) aren't.
The one real difference is that the planet has a gravitational field. That could support some theories which suggest that neutrinos are able to take shortcuts through extra dimensions, but only in the presence of a gravity field. That result would still make relativity choke and turn blue, but it might make sense.
Either way, it doesn't look like a tweaking of the value of c is likely.
Having neutrinos fly at 'true c' rather than a lower 'apparent c' isn't a good solution, because it doesn't take in account neutrino bursts from supernova 1987A. The neutrinos from that supernova were detected only four hours before the light from it. That's explainable with what we know about internal stellar processes. But if the neutrinos were flying FTL then they should have arrived four years earlier.
The most likely explanation for the CERN results (apart from experimental error) is that neutrinos are tachyonic -- they have imaginary mass, and naturally fly faster than light. The higher their energy, the closer to lightspeed they travel.
That's not a trivial situation. To use a technical term, it breaks relativity into itty bitty pieces. We will have to change a lot of theories around. But it's unlikely that the value of c is going to change.
If this stuff ate all the Irn Bru in the world, it would be doing us a favor.
He's said he's sorry.
Um, no he hasn't. Not that I've seen. Not here. The only 'sorry' in his answers is, "Sorry, I don't own a Guy Fawkes mask." If he had used the word 'sorry' I would be much more charitable.
He did say that he has regrets. Regret and sorrow are not the same thing. One can be regretful that they miscalculated and were caught. Sorrow implies empathy and actual emotion. That's all I wanted to see from him.
Hah! 'Amoral' is an excellent definition for my webcomic. Please, feel free to complain about it in as many venues as you wish!
While what he did wasn't the most ethical thing to do, I don't think it in any way qualifies as having done "some of the most amoral and harmful acts in modern computing history" by any measure. You've just got an axe to grind because you were personally affected. If you weren't, you'd probably care much less.
That's a fair cop. I am absolutely biased about this, and I'm not going to try to pretend otherwise. And my quote about 'some of the most amoral acts' is outrageous hyperbole, I admit it.
But Kevin was a bad guy, and I want him to admit that before I'll believe he's a good guy now.
No. Legally he served his time, and that's it. What you're talking about is morality which has absolutely nothing to do with the law.
What I'm talking about is empathy. He's saying that he broke into computer systems, stole some information and terrorized them, but he didn't make a profit on it so it's ethically okay. That's bullshit. It's amoral. It's a complete lack of empathy, and a telling sign of a sociopath.
I don't think he's a hero, nor a much of a villain. He's just some guy that messed with a few things he shouldn't have and paid rather too much for it. He's just one member of a very large list of people.
Except this one member gets a free Q&A session on Slashdot to promote his new book, and is lauded as a paid speaker at hacker conventions. That's a much shorter list. A good segment of the computer geek community sees this sociopath as a hero, and that is a bad reflection on us.
Huh. I wasn't expecting my question to actually be chosen.
In any event, Kevin shows no remorse for being a criminal, which means he essentially still is one. Time served and a stamp of approval by the white hats doesn't matter; what matters is that a person grows from their experiences and becomes better. I see no evidence that Kevin is a better man than he was.
The people defending him should take note that their hero is a crook. And he always will be in my eyes, until I see some contrition and some remorse for what he's done.
You wouldn't stop it. You'd put it in a stable orbit around the Lagrange point, just as we do with sun-observing satellites now.
It may (or may not) be a bad idea, but it's not an infeasible one.
It's interesting, then, that there are over a dozen Anonymous Cowards defending him in response to my post. Sure looks like some people regard him as a role model.
Look, this incident was a long time ago and I've recovered completely from it both emotionally and financially. I just hate seeing the idol worship of bad people. Kevin Mitnick is a bad person. He shouldn't be given a Slashdot 'Ask' thread, he should be shunned. His bad reputation damages all those who associate with him, and Slashdot is opening itself up to that.
What might change my mind about that? Well, if Mitnick feels guilt and remorse for his crimes, I'll take that as a sign that he's grown and become a better person. And that's what I wanted to ask him; how well does he sleep at night? If the answer is 'sometimes not well', then I'll gain a measure of respect for the man and it won't bother me as much when I see people fawning over him like some kind of celebrity.
But until I see that little glint of humility, all I can do is shake my head sadly at all those defending him. You losers sure know how to miss a point.
As soon as I was told about it I canceled the card. Which was a hardship for me, considering I had just gone through a divorce and I was in bad financial straits at the time. He didn't hurt me much, but he frightened me plenty. There are others who were hurt far worse.
It frosts my chaps that this guy is treated as a hero by the hacking community. But I suppose people get the heroes they deserve. I was just wondering how Kevin feels about that.
Hi, Kevin. I was told that my credit card information was among the thousands you stole from Netcom, way back in the day.
I won't ask you what you did with the credit card info you stole, that might cause problems with self-incrimination. I wouldn't want that, oh no.
So let me ask this: How does it feel to be a 'respected' member of the security community now, after having frightened and hurt so many people back then? How does it feel to have the hacker community regard you as a hero when you've done some of the most amoral and harmful acts in modern computing history? I guess what I'm really asking is, how well do you sleep at night? Honestly.