It moves along on wheels under the feet - think roller-skates. Also, think of how a large, mainly top-heavy (I'll bet the legs' only function is as ballast) thing scooting along... on roller-skates. It is unstable.:(
Neat, but... well, if you're going to build something like this, why not at least have it walk or do something more useful with the legs than provide ballast? Also, a gyro might help with this thing's drunken swagger.
It's not that it's terrible... but I think it doesn't even perform up to the same bar that has been set by exoskeleton systems.
Too late, we're rather far behind Russia and China (insofar as what is public information) regarding information transfer along covert channels (for instance). I am afraid that this is likely just one example in a long and losing chain.
OP and everyone else seems to be missing something here: you would want to do this if you're into kleptography. For instance, you could insert your password-protecting payload into a worm/virus, and then include drop-box instructions/etc and have a "ransom received" virus hit the box again, enter the correct password, and then disable the password and die. If, that is, you're an honest blackmailer. The short of it? "Cooperate with us and send money otherwise suffer and either do without or spend a good deal more money getting the data recovered". Great for the whole information brokerage idea.
As U of A has a pretty good business program, these two statements are disjoint. Meaning: I find it unlikely that he did not violate his own (#8) rule within his PhD.
Oh, and... well... yes, natural-language parsing is difficult. You may see mentions of "n-p" in this discussion thread; suffice it to say that it is intractibly difficult to maximize linguistic flow and fluidity while also maintaining the syntax and "low-level" rules of a language. And, yes, MS Word does give silly suggestions - do something constructive like either turning it off or writing something better. To moan and gripe about software development without having a formal or structured knowledge of it is likely counterproductive - it'd be like your average/. reader, say, griping about a problem in chemical engineering
I'm going to studiously ignore saying anything about the article. If you can benefit from it, that's great. If not, that's fine too. Here's the meat of my post: with prices coming down and package / rebate deals on new boxes all the time, it might be tempting to ask why should I build my own box at all?.
My personal take on this (yes, I build all my boxes) used to be cost-effectiveness and component picking, but now it is simply that I can dictate exactly which components I want in my system for the same price as buying something bundled. There is no longer any real cost savings here, but I do like to maintain control over what I put in my machines (up very very very nearly 24/7 thanks to this, with downtime only to upgrade or blow out dust). So there is still merit in "rolling your own" box, as far as I am concerned.
I wanted to beat the cries of, "why would I build when I can buy for the same price?".;)
There are actually programs around the country to address this, flying under the banner of "Information Assurance". I happen to be in one of the six initial NSA-approved programs.
The problem here, as I see it, is not a lack of opportunity or even expertise; it is a problem of making advanced degrees and training cost effective. For instance, I have a classmate who is running at around $120K of debt from school, from undergraduate work to his MSc. While this is not representative, it is quite rare here to see individuals who are able to balance the work-train equation. In short, it really doesn't seem cost-effective to get an advanced degree, especially a MSc as most of these Information Assurance programs offer.
I do not claim to know the environment that has brought us to this, but what I do know is this: just as a recent article in the Journal of Higher Education has pointed out, it would be helpful if we could stop treating student loans as raw "debt", and perhaps more akin to an investment. While I enjoy the thinking behind the SFS Cybercorps, the lack of support through a PhD is a huge oversight in my mind. Until it becomes cost effective to retain brilliance and pay for it, we will continue to face problems endemic to the situation at hand. To wit: if I have no scruples, and know that computer crime / digital tresspass is typically not vigorously followed up upon, maybe I would embark on a kleptography spree. If, however, I was essentially told, "train with us for as long as you like, and then work with us" (e.g. extending Cybercorps to PhD levels of work), then I would come out with a better degree, a guaranteed job, and a good future. Granted, without any moral scruples, it may well be the case that a computer crime spree would just be a natural application of talent.
the CEO of commerical multi-arcade kit seller Ultracade has applied to trademark the name and logo of the ubiquitous open-source multi-arcade emulator MAME and is planning to sue MAME's authors.
I must, must, must go RTFM now. This seems just beyond reason - even here in the US where things like this do happen.
I have to admit that this is confusing to me... so, by the same token, could I build a soapbox derby racer, slap on, say, a Datsun logo (assuming that it wasn't trademarked, of course), and then proceded to go after the original logo and concept designers??
... and I so used to enjoy HP printers of any sort. Oh well. Anyone got any good non-draconian replacements that they've had luck with (cheap, robust, easy to find parts/toner for)?
This is mouse-gestures where the "cursor" path is comprised of your finger/hand through the air in front of the phone. Maybe I'm jaded, but this doesn't seem all that great. Or new. Or innovative.
It seems to me that it's just an edge-detection algorithm hooked up to a CCD, driving a back-end gesture engine.
The government already provides a means of obtaining this information but is not obligated to provide multiple ways of getting it.
Perhaps, but given the choice between vomiting out raw data for people who are interested in the stuff to look over, or giving out ready-made GIS maps, it seems that the former would make more sense and be far less labor-intensive. This is how a lot of the Census data is done (last time I saw) - if you want the whole dataset, that's fine and dandy. However, if you want it aggregated, rolled-up, and ready to be mined for information... well, that'll cost you. If you want it ready-paired with GIS data... that'll cost you. But you can do it yourself, if you're so inclined.
So it should be here: that way, the city spends $0 on the problem, and is able to point anyone asking at the ENTIRE data set, which then becomes this person's problem to figure out just how to use rather than the local government's problem. This approach seems more resaonble to me.
DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, TOWN OF GREENWICH v. FREEDOM OF INFORMATION COMMISSION et al., SC 17262
Judicial District of New Britain
Freedom of Information Act; Whether Town's Geographic Information System Database is Exempt from Disclosure Under General Statutes 1-210.The defendant Stephen Whitaker requested from the department of information technology for the town of Greenwich (department) a copy of computer records from the town's geographic information system database. The records included orthophotography, consisting of photographic images of the town taken from an aircraft and corrected for spatial distortion and lens curve, and data depicting such things as building footprints, which could be overlaid on the orthophotography. He also sought computer server databases compiled by the town for use in creating its tax assessment databases, which included information on property ownership, value and street address. The department denied the request on the ground that Greenwich, as an affluent community, is susceptible to jewel thieves and kidnappers and that the records Whitaker sought could be helpful to potential criminals. The department also believed that release of the requested records could compromise the security of the town by facilitating terrorist activities. Whitaker then filed a complaint with the freedom of information commission alleging that the department had violated the freedom of information act when it denied his request. The commission found that the department's refusal to release the records was in violation of the act and ordered that the records be provided to Whitaker. The department appealed to Superior Court, which found that the department had failed to establish its claim that the records were exempt from disclosure because their release could create a legitimate public safety concern by assisting criminal or terrorist activities. The court further found that the department had failed to prove its claim that the records were exempt either under General Statutes 1-210 (b) (5) (A), which provides an exemption for "trade secrets," or under 1-210 (b) (2), which provides an exemption for "records of standards, procedures, processes, software and codes . . . the disclosure of which would compromise the security or integrity of an information technology system." The court, accordingly, dismissed the department's appeal. In this appeal to the Supreme Court, the department challenges the court's findings and additionally argues that the court improperly failed to consider Public Act 2002, No. 02-133, 1, which became effective shortly before the commission's decision. That public act amended 1-210 (b) (19), which provides an exemption for "records when there are reasonable grounds to believe that their disclosure may result in a safety risk," to include records of municipal agencies.
It appears that Greenwich Town provides access for A GIS map request from its site. It seems silly to me that the actual back-end data be obfuscated and off-limits, when the front-end data (e.g. the map) is available. Granted, I've not actually opened the PDF and seen if a fee exists, but it should be only nominally difficult to get a GIS map from these guys. I do not believe, then, that the orthophotography in use here is the issue. Then again, the map (link above) could just be a low-resolution version of the high-res back-end image captured by the plane.
Whatever the case, the decision mentions that
The department denied the [tax assessment database] request on the ground that Greenwich, as an affluent community, is susceptible to jewel thieves and kidnappers and that the records Whitaker sought could be helpful to potential criminals
and I think this is more on-target with the decision against release of the information.
My question, then, is this: how is this different than taking Census data and pairing it with Tiger to create fully data-minable maps of cities/counties/states? It would seem, to me anyway, that this information already exists out in the world, and withholding it is injurous and detrimental to the community, and damaging to support for local government.
How about already infected machines? I know that one patch-worm generated so much traffic getting fixes that it was as bad as the original worm... but how about something that works on an "if-you-attack-me" basis. Years later, I still have countless hits on my webserver from infected MS machines trying to exploit nonexistant flaws (non-MS server).
That's actually where the payload deployment option came in - it was only WHEN I had been attacked that it would launch against the end-target machine. However, it still seems legally reckless to do something like that, however technically interesting - or necessary. What it all came down to, for me, was two-fold: 1) Would I like it if someone else did this to me (either correctly or incorrectly, as packets can be spoofed)? 2) What assurance of fail-safe operation can I generate in a tool that would be able to, in the presence of loads of spoofed packets, bombard a remote network/host/link?
Again, though, I want to point out that the technical aspect of this is appealing, but is overwhelmed - for me, anyway - by the concern of creating something potentially far worse than the original "bad" worm.
So really, if I return the volley with something that directs the machine to patch/removal-tool itself, chances are that it's consuming less bandwidth than the virus, and I'm not actively seeking out infected machines myself just responding to an attack against my own.
Well... is it? I'm not being an ass when I ask this, but I'm genuinely interested. You know... this all comes under the research stream heading of "computer immunology" - hopefully someone who is into it would have something useful to say here. It seems like a good area to get into - interesting, definitely! - but I'm not sure how the legal system here (USA) would work. I might be wrong, but I'd imagine that at the first comment that the defendant is a "security person who wrote a program that goes out and contacts other machines without their consent", the judge wouldn't have the technical prowess to fully understand how this is different than a computer crime (B&E). Maybe - hopefully - I'm wrong, but it appears to me that, in the United States, cyber-law is lagging behind contract and common law (obviously, given the relative timeframes involved). Also, if you or your worm were to target the WRONG system... how would you feel? I would rather not take the chance to write something that can hose a lot of machines to save just a few that could be manually patched and secured anyway. Again, this is just my $0.02, and I do like the points made here, but for me it'd be too difficult to be 100% accurate in determining where the attack originated from... and anything less than this means that innocent machines and system operators are being targeted, which is unacceptable in my mind.
I feel that white worms, when done correctly, are a good thing. This is a case where the ends justify the means, even if it does mean comprimising vulnerable systems.
I disagree.
I very nearly wrote an anti-code-blue worm a few years back, and got to the point of payload (patch) deployment when the glaring flaw came to me: any time that you or a program that you made does something unexpected, or makes a connection to another machine, YOU are liable for what happens. Given that heterogeneous computers and networks exist, can you test for 100% of all possible cases? Likely not.
It's not so much that I disagree with the sentiment, you see, but I find it impossible to ever run into the case that a white worm is done correctly and can be certified as such.
In the example above, for instance, all that an attacker would have to do would be to infect a netblock with Code Blue, point them at my anti-blue worm launcher, and then watch the fun as I "cause" a DDOS with all the network traffic that will go spewing back and forth between the two sites. The attacker has now been able to effect the Availability of two sites in one go. Not exactly something that I'd like my name attached to, hence the reason that no anti-code-blue-worms have been released into the wild from me.
How 'bout using computer forensics on the computer of the departed? A TON of information may be found in slack space and elsewhere on the computer, and this is what I'd first be inclined to do if someone came to me in this prediciment. Of course, the best case here is if the computer was not touched after the person died. Or, at least, if a time / day of death could be established such that the investigator knew to look only at search results from BEFORE that time / day.
I wonder when we'll see this used to augment recall / retention of information? It's been shown that the association between information and scent is a powerful one, and it may tap into state-dependent learning. e.g. I learn calculus on my PC by researching and maybe looking at the class notes. I do so with the ball set to "vanilla". I then walk into my calculus exam the next day or week with a vanilla bean or some artificial vanilla scent. I then take the exam and experience a lift in information retrieval.
This seems like it may be the culmination of a generation of kids told to "hammer away on the keyboard and hash any old thing out". It seems to me that this has gone hand-in-hand with letter writing going out - as individuals (myself included) tend not to write letters any longer, perhaps the construct of "permanence" has gone out the window. Looking back at historical writings, the letters are just beautiful and well thought-out. However, I worry that now, 100 to 150 years later, we'll only leave a legacy of "j00 ar4 s0 lame, d00dz!". In short, I think that we can boil this down to one word with regard to technology mediating our communications: mis-application.:(
I recently (well, as of about 9 months ago) made the Linux --> FreeBSD switch for my server, and I am EXTREMELY satisfied with it! I know that *BSD has been declared "dead", but for a blackbox it has given me a really solid, stable, and reliable platform. I'm not certain about how easy it'd be to take BSD to the blade market as compared with Linux (e.g. Beowulf or Condor clusters), but I'd be willing to bet it's just about comparable.
So, as a low-income home buyer with good (or virtually no) credit, I can either try to get a lender to GIVE me $35,000 for this, or I can go in on a traditional home mortgage.
Quite frankly, I'm not sold on it, and nor would any lender be. With a home, at least the lender: (a) sees that, barring something extraordinary, the home will appreciate in value over the life of the loan, and (b) the buyer will conceivably put EQUITY into the home, which tends to boost economic figures by either raw goods consumption or the use of craftsmen.
As a lender, if I saw someone wanting US$15,000, say, for this, I know that I'd not give it to them. A home like this, for good or bad, has only a tiny limited market for resale, IF it makes it that far down the road.
On a more personal note, I think this is the final thing we need in our realization of a negative utopia - to house the population in interchangeable quarters (we'll call 'em "barracks" while we're at it) that cannot really be sculpted, designed, or decorated to the taste of the individual (no hanging a picture in this home!). This seems like a BAD thing.
I'm not against housing everyone (in fact, I think that people deserve it), but anyone with a job and a bit of desire can go about looking into local lenders and programs that are accomodating to their situation, and go get something with a mailing address. This, it seems to me, helps the economy all 'round, while buying one of these units from TFA just acts as a big jar for rent money.
As an AC has said above, this is more a historical recreation which pits people against the simulated world to generate what actually happened, thus testing the Warren commission's finding.
Kudos to the AC for that... now on to my initial knee-jerk point: maybe what ought to happen in a case like this is that 50% of the game's retail price should go towards whatever charitable organization the Kennedy family desires, or any Kennedy endowments or the like. That would be a good and noble thing which would, in my mind, make the whole thing sound a bit less grotesque.
Not neccessarily; it certainly may be used as such (e.g. "this book is pornographic!"), but doesn't have to be.Check out another post of mine for more on this, and one definition that Stanford has of pornography.
So... I guess I'll pass a Bzzzt wrong right back at you.
Standford actually has something to say on the matter:
This suggests a third definition: pornography is sexually explicit material designed to produce sexual arousal in consumers that is bad in a certain way. This definition of pornography makes it analytically true that pornography is bad: by definition, material that is not bad in the relevant way is not pornography. It might be that all and only sexually explicit material is bad in a certain way (e.g., obscene): in which case, "pornography" will refer to all and only the class of sexually explicit materials. But it might be that only some sexually explicit material is objectionable (e.g., degrading to women), in which case only the bad subset of sexually explicit material will count as pornography. And, of course, it is possible that no sexually explicit material is bad in the relevant way (e.g., harmful to women), in which case we would have an error theory about pornography: there would be no pornography, so defined, merely harmless, sexually explicit "erotica".
Point being (here and above) that pornography is not typically what is meant when the cry is taken up to reduce and stomp out "Internet Pornography". A lot of these cries seem to be targeting a larger set: that of erotic imagery and/or writings, which are not pornographic in nature.
Slashdot Mirror
*gak*
It moves along on wheels under the feet - think roller-skates. Also, think of how a large, mainly top-heavy (I'll bet the legs' only function is as ballast) thing scooting along ... on roller-skates. It is unstable. :(
Neat, but ... well, if you're going to build something like this, why not at least have it walk or do something more useful with the legs than provide ballast? Also, a gyro might help with this thing's drunken swagger.
It's not that it's terrible ... but I think it doesn't even perform up to the same bar that has been set by exoskeleton systems.
Too late, we're rather far behind Russia and China (insofar as what is public information) regarding information transfer along covert channels (for instance). I am afraid that this is likely just one example in a long and losing chain.
OP and everyone else seems to be missing something here: you would want to do this if you're into kleptography. For instance, you could insert your password-protecting payload into a worm/virus, and then include drop-box instructions/etc and have a "ransom received" virus hit the box again, enter the correct password, and then disable the password and die. If, that is, you're an honest blackmailer. The short of it? "Cooperate with us and send money otherwise suffer and either do without or spend a good deal more money getting the data recovered". Great for the whole information brokerage idea.
From [a link on] TFA:
Also from [a link on] TFA:
As U of A has a pretty good business program, these two statements are disjoint. Meaning: I find it unlikely that he did not violate his own (#8) rule within his PhD.
Oh, and ... well ... yes, natural-language parsing is difficult. You may see mentions of "n-p" in this discussion thread; suffice it to say that it is intractibly difficult to maximize linguistic flow and fluidity while also maintaining the syntax and "low-level" rules of a language. And, yes, MS Word does give silly suggestions - do something constructive like either turning it off or writing something better. To moan and gripe about software development without having a formal or structured knowledge of it is likely counterproductive - it'd be like your average /. reader, say, griping about a problem in chemical engineering
I'm going to studiously ignore saying anything about the article. If you can benefit from it, that's great. If not, that's fine too. Here's the meat of my post: with prices coming down and package / rebate deals on new boxes all the time, it might be tempting to ask why should I build my own box at all?.
My personal take on this (yes, I build all my boxes) used to be cost-effectiveness and component picking, but now it is simply that I can dictate exactly which components I want in my system for the same price as buying something bundled. There is no longer any real cost savings here, but I do like to maintain control over what I put in my machines (up very very very nearly 24/7 thanks to this, with downtime only to upgrade or blow out dust). So there is still merit in "rolling your own" box, as far as I am concerned.
I wanted to beat the cries of, "why would I build when I can buy for the same price?". ;)
There are actually programs around the country to address this, flying under the banner of "Information Assurance". I happen to be in one of the six initial NSA-approved programs.
The problem here, as I see it, is not a lack of opportunity or even expertise; it is a problem of making advanced degrees and training cost effective. For instance, I have a classmate who is running at around $120K of debt from school, from undergraduate work to his MSc. While this is not representative, it is quite rare here to see individuals who are able to balance the work-train equation. In short, it really doesn't seem cost-effective to get an advanced degree, especially a MSc as most of these Information Assurance programs offer.
I do not claim to know the environment that has brought us to this, but what I do know is this: just as a recent article in the Journal of Higher Education has pointed out, it would be helpful if we could stop treating student loans as raw "debt", and perhaps more akin to an investment. While I enjoy the thinking behind the SFS Cybercorps, the lack of support through a PhD is a huge oversight in my mind. Until it becomes cost effective to retain brilliance and pay for it, we will continue to face problems endemic to the situation at hand. To wit: if I have no scruples, and know that computer crime / digital tresspass is typically not vigorously followed up upon, maybe I would embark on a kleptography spree. If, however, I was essentially told, "train with us for as long as you like, and then work with us" (e.g. extending Cybercorps to PhD levels of work), then I would come out with a better degree, a guaranteed job, and a good future. Granted, without any moral scruples, it may well be the case that a computer crime spree would just be a natural application of talent.
I must, must, must go RTFM now. This seems just beyond reason - even here in the US where things like this do happen.
I have to admit that this is confusing to me ... so, by the same token, could I build a soapbox derby racer, slap on, say, a Datsun logo (assuming that it wasn't trademarked, of course), and then proceded to go after the original logo and concept designers??
Wow.... and I so used to enjoy HP printers of any sort. Oh well. Anyone got any good non-draconian replacements that they've had luck with (cheap, robust, easy to find parts/toner for)?
... to welcome our new physics dorks^H^H^H^H^Hoverlords.
This is mouse-gestures where the "cursor" path is comprised of your finger/hand through the air in front of the phone. Maybe I'm jaded, but this doesn't seem all that great. Or new. Or innovative.
It seems to me that it's just an edge-detection algorithm hooked up to a CCD, driving a back-end gesture engine.
Perhaps, but given the choice between vomiting out raw data for people who are interested in the stuff to look over, or giving out ready-made GIS maps, it seems that the former would make more sense and be far less labor-intensive. This is how a lot of the Census data is done (last time I saw) - if you want the whole dataset, that's fine and dandy. However, if you want it aggregated, rolled-up, and ready to be mined for information ... well, that'll cost you. If you want it ready-paired with GIS data ... that'll cost you. But you can do it yourself, if you're so inclined.
So it should be here: that way, the city spends $0 on the problem, and is able to point anyone asking at the ENTIRE data set, which then becomes this person's problem to figure out just how to use rather than the local government's problem. This approach seems more resaonble to me.
DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, TOWN OF GREENWICH v. FREEDOM OF INFORMATION COMMISSION et al., SC 17262
Judicial District of New Britain
Freedom of Information Act; Whether Town's Geographic Information System Database is Exempt from Disclosure Under General Statutes 1-210.The defendant Stephen Whitaker requested from the department of information technology for the town of Greenwich (department) a copy of computer records from the town's geographic information system database. The records included orthophotography, consisting of photographic images of the town taken from an aircraft and corrected for spatial distortion and lens curve, and data depicting such things as building footprints, which could be overlaid on the orthophotography. He also sought computer server databases compiled by the town for use in creating its tax assessment databases, which included information on property ownership, value and street address. The department denied the request on the ground that Greenwich, as an affluent community, is susceptible to jewel thieves and kidnappers and that the records Whitaker sought could be helpful to potential criminals. The department also believed that release of the requested records could compromise the security of the town by facilitating terrorist activities. Whitaker then filed a complaint with the freedom of information commission alleging that the department had violated the freedom of information act when it denied his request. The commission found that the department's refusal to release the records was in violation of the act and ordered that the records be provided to Whitaker. The department appealed to Superior Court, which found that the department had failed to establish its claim that the records were exempt from disclosure because their release could create a legitimate public safety concern by assisting criminal or terrorist activities. The court further found that the department had failed to prove its claim that the records were exempt either under General Statutes 1-210 (b) (5) (A), which provides an exemption for "trade secrets," or under 1-210 (b) (2), which provides an exemption for "records of standards, procedures, processes, software and codes . . . the disclosure of which would compromise the security or integrity of an information technology system." The court, accordingly, dismissed the department's appeal. In this appeal to the Supreme Court, the department challenges the court's findings and additionally argues that the court improperly failed to consider Public Act 2002, No. 02-133, 1, which became effective shortly before the commission's decision. That public act amended 1-210 (b) (19), which provides an exemption for "records when there are reasonable grounds to believe that their disclosure may result in a safety risk," to include records of municipal agencies.
It appears that Greenwich Town provides access for A GIS map request from its site. It seems silly to me that the actual back-end data be obfuscated and off-limits, when the front-end data (e.g. the map) is available. Granted, I've not actually opened the PDF and seen if a fee exists, but it should be only nominally difficult to get a GIS map from these guys. I do not believe, then, that the orthophotography in use here is the issue. Then again, the map (link above) could just be a low-resolution version of the high-res back-end image captured by the plane.
Whatever the case, the decision mentions that
and I think this is more on-target with the decision against release of the information.My question, then, is this: how is this different than taking Census data and pairing it with Tiger to create fully data-minable maps of cities/counties/states? It would seem, to me anyway, that this information already exists out in the world, and withholding it is injurous and detrimental to the community, and damaging to support for local government.
Oh well.
... Score one for Microsoft Public Relations*.
* Imagine a "buhh-ZING!" noise here.
That's actually where the payload deployment option came in - it was only WHEN I had been attacked that it would launch against the end-target machine. However, it still seems legally reckless to do something like that, however technically interesting - or necessary. What it all came down to, for me, was two-fold: 1) Would I like it if someone else did this to me (either correctly or incorrectly, as packets can be spoofed)? 2) What assurance of fail-safe operation can I generate in a tool that would be able to, in the presence of loads of spoofed packets, bombard a remote network/host/link?
Again, though, I want to point out that the technical aspect of this is appealing, but is overwhelmed - for me, anyway - by the concern of creating something potentially far worse than the original "bad" worm.
Well ... is it? I'm not being an ass when I ask this, but I'm genuinely interested. You know ... this all comes under the research stream heading of "computer immunology" - hopefully someone who is into it would have something useful to say here. It seems like a good area to get into - interesting, definitely! - but I'm not sure how the legal system here (USA) would work. I might be wrong, but I'd imagine that at the first comment that the defendant is a "security person who wrote a program that goes out and contacts other machines without their consent", the judge wouldn't have the technical prowess to fully understand how this is different than a computer crime (B&E). Maybe - hopefully - I'm wrong, but it appears to me that, in the United States, cyber-law is lagging behind contract and common law (obviously, given the relative timeframes involved). Also, if you or your worm were to target the WRONG system ... how would you feel? I would rather not take the chance to write something that can hose a lot of machines to save just a few that could be manually patched and secured anyway. Again, this is just my $0.02, and I do like the points made here, but for me it'd be too difficult to be 100% accurate in determining where the attack originated from ... and anything less than this means that innocent machines and system operators are being targeted, which is unacceptable in my mind.
I disagree.
I very nearly wrote an anti-code-blue worm a few years back, and got to the point of payload (patch) deployment when the glaring flaw came to me: any time that you or a program that you made does something unexpected, or makes a connection to another machine, YOU are liable for what happens. Given that heterogeneous computers and networks exist, can you test for 100% of all possible cases? Likely not.
It's not so much that I disagree with the sentiment, you see, but I find it impossible to ever run into the case that a white worm is done correctly and can be certified as such.In the example above, for instance, all that an attacker would have to do would be to infect a netblock with Code Blue, point them at my anti-blue worm launcher, and then watch the fun as I "cause" a DDOS with all the network traffic that will go spewing back and forth between the two sites. The attacker has now been able to effect the Availability of two sites in one go. Not exactly something that I'd like my name attached to, hence the reason that no anti-code-blue-worms have been released into the wild from me.
How 'bout using computer forensics on the computer of the departed? A TON of information may be found in slack space and elsewhere on the computer, and this is what I'd first be inclined to do if someone came to me in this prediciment. Of course, the best case here is if the computer was not touched after the person died. Or, at least, if a time / day of death could be established such that the investigator knew to look only at search results from BEFORE that time / day.
This reeks of channel-bonding to me. How (if it is) is this different?
I wonder when we'll see this used to augment recall / retention of information? It's been shown that the association between information and scent is a powerful one, and it may tap into state-dependent learning. e.g. I learn calculus on my PC by researching and maybe looking at the class notes. I do so with the ball set to "vanilla". I then walk into my calculus exam the next day or week with a vanilla bean or some artificial vanilla scent. I then take the exam and experience a lift in information retrieval.
This seems like it may be the culmination of a generation of kids told to "hammer away on the keyboard and hash any old thing out". It seems to me that this has gone hand-in-hand with letter writing going out - as individuals (myself included) tend not to write letters any longer, perhaps the construct of "permanence" has gone out the window. Looking back at historical writings, the letters are just beautiful and well thought-out. However, I worry that now, 100 to 150 years later, we'll only leave a legacy of "j00 ar4 s0 lame, d00dz!". In short, I think that we can boil this down to one word with regard to technology mediating our communications: mis-application. :(
I recently (well, as of about 9 months ago) made the Linux --> FreeBSD switch for my server, and I am EXTREMELY satisfied with it! I know that *BSD has been declared "dead", but for a blackbox it has given me a really solid, stable, and reliable platform. I'm not certain about how easy it'd be to take BSD to the blade market as compared with Linux (e.g. Beowulf or Condor clusters), but I'd be willing to bet it's just about comparable.
So, as a low-income home buyer with good (or virtually no) credit, I can either try to get a lender to GIVE me $35,000 for this, or I can go in on a traditional home mortgage.
Quite frankly, I'm not sold on it, and nor would any lender be. With a home, at least the lender: (a) sees that, barring something extraordinary, the home will appreciate in value over the life of the loan, and (b) the buyer will conceivably put EQUITY into the home, which tends to boost economic figures by either raw goods consumption or the use of craftsmen.
As a lender, if I saw someone wanting US$15,000, say, for this, I know that I'd not give it to them. A home like this, for good or bad, has only a tiny limited market for resale, IF it makes it that far down the road.
On a more personal note, I think this is the final thing we need in our realization of a negative utopia - to house the population in interchangeable quarters (we'll call 'em "barracks" while we're at it) that cannot really be sculpted, designed, or decorated to the taste of the individual (no hanging a picture in this home!). This seems like a BAD thing.
I'm not against housing everyone (in fact, I think that people deserve it), but anyone with a job and a bit of desire can go about looking into local lenders and programs that are accomodating to their situation, and go get something with a mailing address. This, it seems to me, helps the economy all 'round, while buying one of these units from TFA just acts as a big jar for rent money.
As an AC has said above, this is more a historical recreation which pits people against the simulated world to generate what actually happened, thus testing the Warren commission's finding.
Kudos to the AC for that ... now on to my initial knee-jerk point: maybe what ought to happen in a case like this is that 50% of the game's retail price should go towards whatever charitable organization the Kennedy family desires, or any Kennedy endowments or the like. That would be a good and noble thing which would, in my mind, make the whole thing sound a bit less grotesque.
Not neccessarily; it certainly may be used as such (e.g. "this book is pornographic!"), but doesn't have to be.Check out another post of mine for more on this, and one definition that Stanford has of pornography.
So ... I guess I'll pass a Bzzzt wrong right back at you.
Standford actually has something to say on the matter:
Point being (here and above) that pornography is not typically what is meant when the cry is taken up to reduce and stomp out "Internet Pornography". A lot of these cries seem to be targeting a larger set: that of erotic imagery and/or writings, which are not pornographic in nature.