The punishments for failing to disclose information about data breaches to federal law enforcement agents under this new bill include jail time and massive fines.
My first thought was, it's about damn time.
Then I realized that they probably weren't talking about the sort of "data breaches to federal law enforcement agents" I was thinking they were.
When you don't teach people about the importance of civil liberties, it's no wonder they don't defend them. Bring back civics classes!
It isn't that people don't know or care about their civil liberties, it's that they were asked a misleading poll question before most of them had had time to read anything about the subject they were being questioned on. And before you assume that it was an honest mistake, consider that the pollster is a known partisan hack with a history of biased polling.
This poll is nothing short of a brazen public opinion trojan trying to exploit the old "all your friends are doing it" security hole. We're supposed to hear about it and say "Well shucks, if most Americans are in favor of bending over for the soap, why should I be different? After all, they're from the government, and they're here to help us!"
If you've been regularly applying security patches from trusted sources you should be immune to this exploit in any case.
There's very little you can do after the fact (though the C4 idea above was cute). The key is to do what somewhere I once worked did: make sure that there are effective corporate policies in place long before hand to make sure that laptop thieves don't profit when they get their hands on sensitive information.
For example:
Have policies that make corrupting corporate data easy, but correcting it tedious/impossible.
Give different departments "ownership" of different data and encourage them to distribute it to people who need it via e-mail (hand copied from the application), screen shots, or exported spreadsheets that do not correctly propagate column names.
Encourage employees to edit the e-mails to produce versions of the data that they think are more accurate, and distribute them with names like "New (revised) revision of Q4 draft data dump--updated, with corrections by MQR for some of the errors introduced by BC in Q3"
Have data retention policies that assure that every laptop has at least twenty such interpretations of any key data on it at any time.
Prevent the addition of new columns to databases, and instead encourage users to reuse existing columns (Title, Address_line_2, Retirement_date, ROI_projection, Collateral_damage, NSA_contact_name etc.) that are otherwise underutilized.
Make test data by permuting fields (and words/digits within fields) between rows of live data. Do not clearly distinguish live data from test data, to assure that some of these will end up on laptops as well.
With a few simple precautions like these, you can be sure that the bad guys may steal the laptop, and the data, but they won't have any more idea what to do with it than you do.
Agreed. The "explanatory" text can be very manipulative. They also sometimes word the question on the link leading into the poll in an opposite sense than the question on the poll itself (in which case the options are generally simply "Yes" or "No").
They also are prone to the old "split the vote trick":
"Yes, I think Tom Cruse is a wonderful actor,"
"No, I think the way he treats women is unacceptable",
"No, I think the way he behaved on Oprah was childish,"
"No, I think all scientologists are fruitcakes"
...
Oh look, more people think Tom Cruse is a wonderful actor, than any agree with any of the other statements!
What I find interesting is when they are obviously pulling for one answer and the one they are trying to discourage still comes out on top.
This whole electronic voting thing is a fiasco so far. We need to slow this down and do it right. Or just stick to optical scan ballots. They do in fact work.
Ah, but you can game optical scan ballots too.
In Ohio they had multiple precincts in the same place (e.g. a high school gym).
The ballots for the different precincts were different (candidates in "randomized" order by precinct, as required by law).
The booth lines were not clearly labeled.
The order of the candidates were such that:
If a precinct 1 voter went to a booth for precinct 2 by mistake:
Votes for candidate A went to candidate B
Votes for candidate B were discarded (invalid)
But if a precinct 2 voter went to a booth for precinct 1 by mistake:
Votes for candidate A were discarded (invalid)
Votes for candidate B went to candidate A
These precincts, which were expected to go strongly for A showed many more votes for B then expected.
They showed many more (invalid) votes then expected, with precinct 2 having more than precinct 1 by roughly the ratio that A was expected to be favored over B.
You can also corrupt the counting machines to incorrectly report the totals. There are several ways to do this that would be fiendishly difficult to detect without manually counting the ballots.
But this isn't just about the machines. We also need to impose some accountability on the whole process, and the people who are abusing it.
So, many cell phones work at 800 Mhz or thereabouts which is in fact a direct harmonic of 2.4 Ghz.
No. You've got it exactly backwards. 2.4Ghz is a harmonic of 800Mhz, but 800Mhz is not a harmonic of 2.4Ghz, in the same way that 24 is an integer multiple of 8, but 8 is not an integer multiple of 24.
Harmonics are always higher frequency than the fundamental.
While I would agree with the value of learning different ways to think, that doesn't change the fact that witting--all writing--can be effectively treated as an engineering problem. Humour, for example, requires a great deal of the sort of treatment I outlined.
In fact, I would go as far as to say that your list of exceptions "anything that has a significant element of creativity, humor, or persuasion" put it exactly backwards. These are precisely the sorts of writing that require the most critical/engineering thinking if they are to be effective. Why? Because they are precisely the cases where the writer must most effectively manage the reader's thought processes. Nobody worries about "spoilers" when reviewing a journal article; nobody asks if a technical manual is predictable or surprising, or if it has plot holes you could drive an SUV through. In such cases, all we care about is the end result.
But the sort of writing you list is more demanding. The writer needs to consider not only the final thought the reader is left with, but all the turns and twists they took to get there. For such problems, discipline is more, not less, important.
--MarkusQ
P.S. As for your characterization of the process, "put into a neat formula that scientists, programmers, or engineers will be able to say 'that's like writing and debugging code.'" I am forced to conclude that you don't really understand what engineers do.
Engineering can't even be put into a "neat formula" in the sense you mean here--it is a process, a process that requires a great deal of judgment and creative thinking at every step. The "formulas" of science and engineering that you speak of are not generative formulas (as in "formulaic fiction"); rather, they are constraints, as in the rules for writing Haiku, and make the problem more challenging, not more mechanical.
First, come up with an overall structure that embodies your goal; second, try to implement that structure using primitives you are sure of, third, identify problems, fourth, try to fix them, and fifth, do it all over using what you learned in the prior pass.
Top down doesn't "stink," but it's only one step of a multistep process.
Present writing as an engineering problem. This is an accurate, if somewhat unconventional, way to look at it. When you write, you have a goal (communicate a certain set of ideas), some constraints (target length, assumed audience, etc.) and some criteria for ranking proposed solutions (shorter is better, linking ideas in multiple ways gives a more robust treatment, etc.)
This fits neatly into the mold of classic engineering problems. Presented this way, they should be able to (with only a little guidance) bring their full skill set to bear on the problem. For example:
Top down design Starting with an outline and working out the details is the normal way of tackling an engineering problem.
Checking your facts Engineers should be used to checking anything that is even remotely doubtful before committing to it. So should writers.
Failure mode analysis For each sentence ask yourself, could it be misread? How? What is the best way to fix it?
Dependency analysis Are the ideas presented in an order that assures that each point can be understood on the basis of the readers assumed knowledge and the information provided by preceding points?
Optimization Are there any unnecessary parts? Does the structure require the reader to remember to many details at once, before linking them?
Structured testing If you read what you have written assuming only the knowledge that the reader can be expected to have, does each part work the way you intended? If you read it aloud, does it sound the way you intended?
One of the biggest problems with teaching people to write is getting them to read what they have written, think about it, and rewrite it until it does what they wanted it to. Here, at least, engineers should have a head start over most students, insofar as they are used to the fact that your first stab at a design is almost never viable.
They are, as you mention, present in many markets. But that doesn't mean they are making money (and it's kind of silly to say you "captured" a market if it costs you more to be there than you're making).
XBox, for example, just had it's first ever profitable quarter, but has a long way to go before it even pays back the money they invested in it, let alone give them a decend ROI. And (from the last time I looked through their annual report) I believe that to be the case for most of the other "successes" you mentioned as well.
Further, which of these were developed "in house" without partnering (or appropriating technology from) another company that had already done the groundbreaking work?
That would be a major departure for Microsoft, the software maker that is legendary for toiling on its own until it captures a new market.
Huh? This is just plain not true.
Microsoft frequently "partners" with others (e.g. MSNBC). What they are famous for isn't refusing to partner, but rather turning on their partners and destroying them the moment it becomes to their advantage to do so.
What new Markets has Microsoft captured exactly? IIRC, most of their attempts to go beyond their core competence have been costly failures.
A substantial rewrite of the rules of Congress might help, but they're not happening any time soon (because the present rules always benefit the party in power).
They generally benefit the party in power, but not always.
However in terms of personal survival (rather than survival of the species)
Genes don't optimize the survival of the species. They don't even care about the survival of the individual. The one and only thing that they seek to optimize is the number of copies of themselves that make it into subsequent generations. Genes. Not individuals, not the species. So (from the gene's point of view) none of the other what-ifs matter if you aren't making babies or helping your close kin make babies. A gene for a trait that hindered the spread of that gene would be doomed, no matter how well it looked after the individuals that had it before it vanished from the genome.
Greed, in its most base sense today implies hoarding money and doing whatever you can to get more of it. This can potentially have a very large impact on how attractive that person is to members of the opposite sex (particularly a rich guy with women) and thus has a direct affect on his chances of successfully reproducing.
The problem with this assumption is that the facts don't support it. The rich, on average, have fewer children, not more, as you assume. The reasons are complicated, but it basically boils down to a ratio of disposable income to cost of raising a child to occupy your niche in the economy. The rich have more money, but raising a rich kid is far more expensive than raising a poor child. Consequently, the rich can't afford to raise as many children as the poor can, and thus have fewer on average.
A compounding factor is time: no matter how rich you are, you only have so much time. Once you have enough money to raise as many children as you have time for, spending additional time acquiring more money is taking away from the time you have to produce and raise offspring and reducing your total number of children.
I could, for example, make a pretty good case for greed BEING a survival trait for you and yours.
Greed (trying to acquire more resources than you could reasonably need) may have been a survival trait before we became so social. Now, it's anti-survival, but the urge is still there (which is probably the strongest argument for it once being pro-survival). In the kludgefest that is evolution, it hasn't been eliminated, but patched over with various greed-limiting mechanisms.
The question is, are we applying the patches fast enough?
The summary at least misses the point. The audience didn't "switch their allegiances"; in each conflict, they were cheering for the better (generally smarter) of the combatants. That's why those films seldom just have people being killed. Instead:
We meet a character
We get to see how stupid they are (or greedy, or two faced, or whatever)
We get to see what happens to them for it
Then, at the end, we get to see someone who didn't exhibit these character flaws win.
It has little or nothing to do with sexism, and everything to do with cheering for people with survival traits.
It depends on who you mean by "these people". If you mean the person that asked the original question, the most cogent answer would be Cliff, who posted the story. If you mean me, I signed up for an account years ago, just like you did. If you mean Bush, the answer would be the American electorate, with a little help from big oil, Diebold, the supreme court, etc. If you mean the people in various countries who try to outlaw VOIP, there would be a whole host of answers, depending on the country.
Hope that helps.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. If you were serious, I suggest you take your sense of humor in for a tune up. If you catch these problems at the stage where you're just missing occasional jokes or letting parenthetical comments distract you from the topic at hand, it's generally much cheaper than if you wait until you are such a complete sour puss that you need a full overhaul.
Vonage has worked great for me in every country I've tried it, and I've never heard of a place where it didn't work, provided that you've got halfway decent bandwidth and are willing to tinker with your settings on their web page to suit your circumstances.
The only caution I'd offer on that count, many local Telco's are government run monopolies, and may not be in love with VOIP. This may mean you need to run through an SSH tunnel or something (depending on how strongly they feel about it and how much you are worried about getting caught) and that can add latency to your connection, in addition to the statutory latencies that may be imposed if you are caught. As always, think carefully before deciding to break laws (unless of course you happen to be the Commander in Chief of the world's only remaining super power, in which case, no worries, just do whatever you want).
It's already happened, but not through the intentional use of genetic algorithms. Back in the late 1980's, there was a virus on MSDos that was dirt simple: it would attach itself to two other.COM files provided they weren't already infected and, if the date was Friday the 13th, it would delete files off your system. Now, this might seem like a good design, from a black hat's point of view, but it isn't optimal from the viruses point of view.
Enter natural selection.
As with any repeated copying process, errors eventually creep in. Most of them, of course, undoubtedly caused the virus to fail. But by the early to mid 1990's, there were at least two variants that were seen in the wild that 1) were clearly the result of copying errors, and 2) increased the spread of the virus.
Friday the 13th/Benign did not delete files; thus, it would not suffer a population collapse every seven months or so as did the original.
Friday the 13th/Promiscuous was a sub-type of benign that would reinfect files that had already been infected (thus possibly displacing a non-promiscuous version). This made it slightly easier for users to detect, but gave it a competitive advantage over its rivals.
I think the main reason we don't see this happening with newer viruses is that they are much more complicated and there are more mechanisms in place to prevent copying errors, both of which would drive down the rate at which useful mutations appear.
If anyone is interested in a little more detail/background, Ivars Peterson wrote about this (minus the latest development of course) back in 1999.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. Am I the only one who thinks it sad when a link to an article by Ivars Peterson adds details to a discussion? The posted article said...basically nothing about the topic. Not surprising when you've got the equivalent of one typewritten page to work with and you feel the need to start by explaining what primes are. But still sad.
Slashdot Mirror
When I read this part of the summary:
The punishments for failing to disclose information about data breaches to federal law enforcement agents under this new bill include jail time and massive fines.
My first thought was, it's about damn time.
Then I realized that they probably weren't talking about the sort of "data breaches to federal law enforcement agents" I was thinking they were.
--MarkusQ
P.S. If you missed my insightful post on the "poll says people want the NSA to spy on them" story there's still time to check it out.
When you don't teach people about the importance of civil liberties, it's no wonder they don't defend them. Bring back civics classes!
It isn't that people don't know or care about their civil liberties, it's that they were asked a misleading poll question before most of them had had time to read anything about the subject they were being questioned on. And before you assume that it was an honest mistake, consider that the pollster is a known partisan hack with a history of biased polling.
This poll is nothing short of a brazen public opinion trojan trying to exploit the old "all your friends are doing it" security hole. We're supposed to hear about it and say "Well shucks, if most Americans are in favor of bending over for the soap, why should I be different? After all, they're from the government, and they're here to help us!"
If you've been regularly applying security patches from trusted sources you should be immune to this exploit in any case.
-- MarkusQ
There's very little you can do after the fact (though the C4 idea above was cute). The key is to do what somewhere I once worked did: make sure that there are effective corporate policies in place long before hand to make sure that laptop thieves don't profit when they get their hands on sensitive information.
For example:
With a few simple precautions like these, you can be sure that the bad guys may steal the laptop, and the data, but they won't have any more idea what to do with it than you do.
--MarkusQ
Agreed. The "explanatory" text can be very manipulative. They also sometimes word the question on the link leading into the poll in an opposite sense than the question on the poll itself (in which case the options are generally simply "Yes" or "No").
They also are prone to the old "split the vote trick":
Oh look, more people think Tom Cruse is a wonderful actor, than any agree with any of the other statements!
What I find interesting is when they are obviously pulling for one answer and the one they are trying to discourage still comes out on top.
--MarkusQ
This whole electronic voting thing is a fiasco so far. We need to slow this down and do it right. Or just stick to optical scan ballots. They do in fact work.
Ah, but you can game optical scan ballots too.
You can also corrupt the counting machines to incorrectly report the totals. There are several ways to do this that would be fiendishly difficult to detect without manually counting the ballots.
But this isn't just about the machines. We also need to impose some accountability on the whole process, and the people who are abusing it.
-- MarkusQ
So, many cell phones work at 800 Mhz or thereabouts which is in fact a direct harmonic of 2.4 Ghz.
No. You've got it exactly backwards. 2.4Ghz is a harmonic of 800Mhz, but 800Mhz is not a harmonic of 2.4Ghz, in the same way that 24 is an integer multiple of 8, but 8 is not an integer multiple of 24.
Harmonics are always higher frequency than the fundamental.
--MarkusQ
The MSNBC poll shows 85% against.
-- MarkusQ
In fact, I would go as far as to say that your list of exceptions "anything that has a significant element of creativity, humor, or persuasion" put it exactly backwards. These are precisely the sorts of writing that require the most critical/engineering thinking if they are to be effective. Why? Because they are precisely the cases where the writer must most effectively manage the reader's thought processes. Nobody worries about "spoilers" when reviewing a journal article; nobody asks if a technical manual is predictable or surprising, or if it has plot holes you could drive an SUV through. In such cases, all we care about is the end result.
But the sort of writing you list is more demanding. The writer needs to consider not only the final thought the reader is left with, but all the turns and twists they took to get there. For such problems, discipline is more, not less, important.
--MarkusQ
P.S. As for your characterization of the process, "put into a neat formula that scientists, programmers, or engineers will be able to say 'that's like writing and debugging code.'" I am forced to conclude that you don't really understand what engineers do.
Engineering can't even be put into a "neat formula" in the sense you mean here--it is a process, a process that requires a great deal of judgment and creative thinking at every step. The "formulas" of science and engineering that you speak of are not generative formulas (as in "formulaic fiction"); rather, they are constraints, as in the rules for writing Haiku, and make the problem more challenging, not more mechanical.
"Top down, bottom up, lather, rinse, repeat!"
First, come up with an overall structure that embodies your goal; second, try to implement that structure using primitives you are sure of, third, identify problems, fourth, try to fix them, and fifth, do it all over using what you learned in the prior pass.
Top down doesn't "stink," but it's only one step of a multistep process.
--MarkusQ
Present writing as an engineering problem. This is an accurate, if somewhat unconventional, way to look at it. When you write, you have a goal (communicate a certain set of ideas), some constraints (target length, assumed audience, etc.) and some criteria for ranking proposed solutions (shorter is better, linking ideas in multiple ways gives a more robust treatment, etc.)
This fits neatly into the mold of classic engineering problems. Presented this way, they should be able to (with only a little guidance) bring their full skill set to bear on the problem. For example:
One of the biggest problems with teaching people to write is getting them to read what they have written, think about it, and rewrite it until it does what they wanted it to. Here, at least, engineers should have a head start over most students, insofar as they are used to the fact that your first stab at a design is almost never viable.
--MarkusQ
They are, as you mention, present in many markets. But that doesn't mean they are making money (and it's kind of silly to say you "captured" a market if it costs you more to be there than you're making).
XBox, for example, just had it's first ever profitable quarter, but has a long way to go before it even pays back the money they invested in it, let alone give them a decend ROI. And (from the last time I looked through their annual report) I believe that to be the case for most of the other "successes" you mentioned as well.
Further, which of these were developed "in house" without partnering (or appropriating technology from) another company that had already done the groundbreaking work?
--MarkusQ
That would be a major departure for Microsoft, the software maker that is legendary for toiling on its own until it captures a new market.
Huh? This is just plain not true.
--MarkusQ
A substantial rewrite of the rules of Congress might help, but they're not happening any time soon (because the present rules always benefit the party in power).
They generally benefit the party in power, but not always.
--MarkusQ
However in terms of personal survival (rather than survival of the species)
Genes don't optimize the survival of the species. They don't even care about the survival of the individual. The one and only thing that they seek to optimize is the number of copies of themselves that make it into subsequent generations. Genes. Not individuals, not the species. So (from the gene's point of view) none of the other what-ifs matter if you aren't making babies or helping your close kin make babies. A gene for a trait that hindered the spread of that gene would be doomed, no matter how well it looked after the individuals that had it before it vanished from the genome.
--MarkusQ
Greed, in its most base sense today implies hoarding money and doing whatever you can to get more of it. This can potentially have a very large impact on how attractive that person is to members of the opposite sex (particularly a rich guy with women) and thus has a direct affect on his chances of successfully reproducing.
The problem with this assumption is that the facts don't support it. The rich, on average, have fewer children, not more, as you assume. The reasons are complicated, but it basically boils down to a ratio of disposable income to cost of raising a child to occupy your niche in the economy. The rich have more money, but raising a rich kid is far more expensive than raising a poor child. Consequently, the rich can't afford to raise as many children as the poor can, and thus have fewer on average.
A compounding factor is time: no matter how rich you are, you only have so much time. Once you have enough money to raise as many children as you have time for, spending additional time acquiring more money is taking away from the time you have to produce and raise offspring and reducing your total number of children.
--MarkusQ
I could, for example, make a pretty good case for greed BEING a survival trait for you and yours.
Greed (trying to acquire more resources than you could reasonably need) may have been a survival trait before we became so social. Now, it's anti-survival, but the urge is still there (which is probably the strongest argument for it once being pro-survival). In the kludgefest that is evolution, it hasn't been eliminated, but patched over with various greed-limiting mechanisms.
The question is, are we applying the patches fast enough?
--MarkusQ
The summary at least misses the point. The audience didn't "switch their allegiances"; in each conflict, they were cheering for the better (generally smarter) of the combatants. That's why those films seldom just have people being killed. Instead:
Then, at the end, we get to see someone who didn't exhibit these character flaws win.
It has little or nothing to do with sexism, and everything to do with cheering for people with survival traits.
--MarkusQ
I can see it now: --MarkusQ
Who lets these people in here?
It depends on who you mean by "these people". If you mean the person that asked the original question, the most cogent answer would be Cliff, who posted the story. If you mean me, I signed up for an account years ago, just like you did. If you mean Bush, the answer would be the American electorate, with a little help from big oil, Diebold, the supreme court, etc. If you mean the people in various countries who try to outlaw VOIP, there would be a whole host of answers, depending on the country.
Hope that helps.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. If you were serious, I suggest you take your sense of humor in for a tune up. If you catch these problems at the stage where you're just missing occasional jokes or letting parenthetical comments distract you from the topic at hand, it's generally much cheaper than if you wait until you are such a complete sour puss that you need a full overhaul.
Vonage has worked great for me in every country I've tried it, and I've never heard of a place where it didn't work, provided that you've got halfway decent bandwidth and are willing to tinker with your settings on their web page to suit your circumstances.
The only caution I'd offer on that count, many local Telco's are government run monopolies, and may not be in love with VOIP. This may mean you need to run through an SSH tunnel or something (depending on how strongly they feel about it and how much you are worried about getting caught) and that can add latency to your connection, in addition to the statutory latencies that may be imposed if you are caught. As always, think carefully before deciding to break laws (unless of course you happen to be the Commander in Chief of the world's only remaining super power, in which case, no worries, just do whatever you want).
--MarkusQ
It's already happened, but not through the intentional use of genetic algorithms. Back in the late 1980's, there was a virus on MSDos that was dirt simple: it would attach itself to two other
Enter natural selection.
As with any repeated copying process, errors eventually creep in. Most of them, of course, undoubtedly caused the virus to fail. But by the early to mid 1990's, there were at least two variants that were seen in the wild that 1) were clearly the result of copying errors, and 2) increased the spread of the virus.
Friday the 13th/Benign did not delete files; thus, it would not suffer a population collapse every seven months or so as did the original.
Friday the 13th/Promiscuous was a sub-type of benign that would reinfect files that had already been infected (thus possibly displacing a non-promiscuous version). This made it slightly easier for users to detect, but gave it a competitive advantage over its rivals.
I think the main reason we don't see this happening with newer viruses is that they are much more complicated and there are more mechanisms in place to prevent copying errors, both of which would drive down the rate at which useful mutations appear.
--MarkusQ
If you liked the parent post, you may want to check out some of his other posts.
-- MarkusQ
My first thought was "I'd never pay to see that!"
Then I re-read the line:
40-ton, computer controlled stage with 17 elevators and the cast of 55
My second thought was, "Hmmm. I wonder if they use MSWindows, on a wireless network?" It might be worth going to see after all.
-- MarkusQ
I'd say "kill me now", but you just did.
--MarkusQ
If anyone is interested in a little more detail/background, Ivars Peterson wrote about this (minus the latest development of course) back in 1999.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. Am I the only one who thinks it sad when a link to an article by Ivars Peterson adds details to a discussion? The posted article said...basically nothing about the topic. Not surprising when you've got the equivalent of one typewritten page to work with and you feel the need to start by explaining what primes are. But still sad.