Two days ago, in a regular newspaper, I read that "A Gene Involved in Aging Has Been Found" and now, two days later on slashdot, I learnt that we have also discovered a longevity gene !
Science really goes at a fast speed nowadays.
a sixth sense, the ability to know someone is looking at you even though they are not in your field of vision. I have yet to see science explain this... Okay, it is a known fact [citation needed] that we see small details with the central part of our field of view, the peripheral area being more sensitive to movements and variations of light. These detections have their own fast circuits to react to dangerous things. People dodge before looking when a dark thing appear on top of their head, catching or deflecting a ball is slower than a reflex but faster than conscious act.
It is less known that the resolution of this peripheral area is better than what we see consciously. All this information is not wasted though, it goes through our fast object recognition routine. This routine use more movement information than shape/color and works only with a small set of objects that you know well. People owning cat can probably confirm how often they have mistaken some clothes on the floor for one of their pet before looking directly at it. The detection of other people/animal's direction of gaze is something that is almost hard-wired in this area. Most of the moving stuff at the border of your field of view will just but dismissed but people gazing at you will trigger a red flag. This is why if you are at the limit of the field of view of someone, you can move or make signs that the person will not recognize, even maybe not really be aware of them being caused by a human, but if you look at him/her. Red flag.
This is not seeing things outside your FOV (it doesn't work if you shut your eyes). But it is seeing things outside your "conscious" field of view.
You wonder? You wonder? Of course it has security implications. I think you are missing this:
We remain proud of OpenBSD's record of ten years with only two remote holes in the default install. and the fact that openBSD doesn't use the linux/windows "security" paradigm of "write software quickly, find security bugs, fix them ASAP". Their strategy is instead to be secure out of the box, at the price of a slower pace of development and less features.
I am quite happy with linux right now. But I know that the day I will run a critical application/server, I will either use openBSD or maybe a stable debian but not a recent linux.
If your goth friend is skilled and manage to write complete documentations and occasionaly answer questions, he could very well make it. I doubt however that even a computer genius can do the same amount of work than a good working team of five average engineers.
I probably would have called the cops too. At least they can wander over and have a quick word to make sure everything is legit.
Maybe it is just me but if something looked fishy (and for me someone putting a camera on a kite is more geek than pervert) I would just have asked him what he was doing.
Don't tell me about this...
But the first round was interesting, a 3rd force got 18% of voices. Bayrou is the second French politician (after Rocard) who actually understood what computers and internet was all about.
I completely agree with this. I tried to summarize this issue using the word "most". And indeed, having basic/extended/advanced GUI with "basic" staying the same from version to version is exactly what is needed.
Why not doing it right the first time ?
For heaven's sake, it is just about writing documents and it is also 2007. Shouldn't most of the essential features be identified and standardized by now ?
Here in France we are in presidential elections right now. Politics used to say that French were not interested in politics because we had a very low participation rate in 2002, that voting was to hard, that people weren't educated enough to understand how important it was to go voting. Never, ever, they wondered if it could be because French felt that political parties had no interesting propositions to make. This year, nothing changed in the way of voting, but we broke participation records. Only thing that changed : some candidates are 20 years younger than those in 2002. They bring more interesting ideas.
When people vote has a chance to change something, they'll go voting. Period.
First, I wouldn't say "dumb", but I would bet that 90% of voters are not enough knowledgeable about CS to decide if a system is vulnerable to botnet attacks. That alone, would make elections results less authoritative.
Second, seeing how governments all around the world have been choosing crappy electronic voting machines, I am very doubtful that they will come up with a secure online voting system.
Third, I would like to point out that banking institutions (who are really paranoid about the security of some datas, just like governments should be about voting) still see their clients being scammed and deceived by simple emails or more elaborate spywares. I believe that if there was a way to prevent it, they would have been the first to discover it.
Fourth, being administrator of the family computer, I really think that I would be able to mimick any GUI the government could propose and provide this gimmick to the other members of my family, effectively stealing their vote. Would I own an internet cafe, I could do the same to people too poor to have an internet access at home. On a business network, creating a man in the middle attack would be easy (I believe that a lot of online voting supporters want to be able to vote from work)
But of course the most obvious problem of online voting is that authorities don't feel that they have to be accountable about the results of the vote.
Inside a family this can bring some problems. Husband forcing wife to vote the same "You won't vote for this feminist bitch would you ?", major children taking pressure from their parents. "You want to live in a communist state ? Let's see how you manage to pay studies without my support then". Peer pressure can be important also. I don't count how many parties with friends have gone ugly since two persons began to talk politics. And also yeah, I would like to work in a place where the pay is high, job interesting and the boss is clueless.
I also wouldn't like the cops to be able to know I voted for the party that wanted to limit their powers.
I don't want my landlord knowing that I vote for people making apartment prices low.
I don't want my doctor to know that as long as I have been alive, I have always voted for people cutting their funds.
Sorry, I don't want to accept any leader or decision resulting from an election where some people have voted through internet.
The day this happens in my country, I really believe it will have stopped to be a democracy. Democracy is not only about votes. It is also about trust. It is based on the idea that if the leader elected is not the one you like, you can not challenge its legitimacy because more people prefer him. But if there begins to be any doubt about the legitimacy of a leader in an election, civil war becomes very close. Am I paranoiac ? Check the history of all democratic African states who sank in chaos because of election frauds.
Seriously though, these are not Alpha demographic respondents - that should be borne in mind before potentially annihilating democracy.
I couldn't agree more. I would like to point out that these words are exactly describing what is at stake : annihilation of democracy. I have talked to some of these people thinking that online voting would be confident. I heard things like "If this wasn't secure, we would hear about it.". Usually when I tell them that I am working in IT and consider these things a danger to democracy, they become really receptive. See, they trus "us", the geeky crowd, to warn them about potential danger. Don't keep quiet, speak out loud against electronic or internet voting, our voice is considered authoritative by a lot of people on this issue.
It has taken generations to build a democracy, it only takes a few hours from time to time to keep it working. If that can help, remember while waiting that you could line up to get some meat instead.
I agree that employers should allow to take a day off, but I also think that if they don't employees should take this on their free time.
I don't understand. This is a geeky forum, with people probably more knowledgeable about crypto, internet security, privacies issues, etc... than the average Joe. But still nobody thinks that internet voting is inherently insecure.
Let me sum all the problems:
* Voter's PC vulnerability. We all know that the average computer user cannot secure its computer correctly. If some people manage to get their credit card number stolen because of spyware / scams, why wouldn't this work for a vote.
* Cryptography : A good online voting system requires people to be able to check that their vote is correctly counted while still remaining correctly anonymous. This is possible, but you have to be a crypto expert to check that system. And you know that the implementation will probably incorrect with nobody caring about it.
* Privacy : Even a correct crypto implementation would bear a privacy problem. Identites will be hidden thanks to cryptographic algorithms, but this secret should be kept at least during the whole lifetime of every voters, that would be 70 years at least. And we all know that quantum computers, if they can be made, will probably be made during this time period and will be able to break all existing practical crypto algorithms.
Conclusion : Support paper voting. You are the "computer knowledgeable elite" that people rely on to trust electronic/IT devices. Just say them risks are too high.
1. Simulate half of a mouse's brain.
2. Simulate half of a not-so-dead Schrodinger's cat's brain
3. Live in a constant superposition state of profit or poverty
First, this was a humor attempt, but well...
Second, no, the worm doesn't propagate through email. It uses a vulnerability in the OS that allows it to infect an unprotected host connected to Internet. Try installing a windows XP with no service packs and connect it without a firewall to Internet, it should take less than one minute for your PC to be infected.
The policy to activate automatic windows update dates back from the Blaster surge. Before that, people had to balance between upgrades that were known to break some things without warning and a possible threat but XP was said to be more secure than all other windows OS and so many admins wanted to review upgrades before installation. After Blaster, a lot of policies changed. Even the SP2, which takes more than one hour to install, managed to be widespread.
Mod this funny if you want but this clause actually forbids to spray a place with psychotropic products. I am sure that spraying a cloud of ecstasy, THC, or depression-inducing drug on a wide group of people (protesters) could be very useful.
We already induce burn sensation through microwaves and nausea through infra-sound. Is it so far fetched to imagine that one could create some conditions, thanks to some combinations of strident sounds, that prevents a large crowd from thinking rationally, making it easier to make it panic or flee ? We already know that some frequencies are labeled by our unconsciousness as an indication of danger. Couldn't we call that mind control ?
why disable networking on XP? If you are not a complete retard then it is extremely easy to setup and run an XP machine to be safe connected to the net. You must be super paranoid.
Some people were network administrators during the Blaster surge. We are all super paranoid toward XP now. This is our own Vietnam syndrome.
Slashdot Mirror
Two days ago, in a regular newspaper, I read that "A Gene Involved in Aging Has Been Found" and now, two days later on slashdot, I learnt that we have also discovered a longevity gene !
Science really goes at a fast speed nowadays.
It is less known that the resolution of this peripheral area is better than what we see consciously. All this information is not wasted though, it goes through our fast object recognition routine. This routine use more movement information than shape/color and works only with a small set of objects that you know well. People owning cat can probably confirm how often they have mistaken some clothes on the floor for one of their pet before looking directly at it. The detection of other people/animal's direction of gaze is something that is almost hard-wired in this area. Most of the moving stuff at the border of your field of view will just but dismissed but people gazing at you will trigger a red flag.
This is why if you are at the limit of the field of view of someone, you can move or make signs that the person will not recognize, even maybe not really be aware of them being caused by a human, but if you look at him/her. Red flag.
This is not seeing things outside your FOV (it doesn't work if you shut your eyes). But it is seeing things outside your "conscious" field of view.
Yeah, I am working on computer vision
News at 7
I am quite happy with linux right now. But I know that the day I will run a critical application/server, I will either use openBSD or maybe a stable debian but not a recent linux.
If your goth friend is skilled and manage to write complete documentations and occasionaly answer questions, he could very well make it. I doubt however that even a computer genius can do the same amount of work than a good working team of five average engineers.
I concur. Graft'n Play is the future. And we'll need linux drivers.
I probably would have called the cops too. At least they can wander over and have a quick word to make sure everything is legit.
Maybe it is just me but if something looked fishy (and for me someone putting a camera on a kite is more geek than pervert) I would just have asked him what he was doing.
Don't tell me about this...
But the first round was interesting, a 3rd force got 18% of voices. Bayrou is the second French politician (after Rocard) who actually understood what computers and internet was all about.
I completely agree with this. I tried to summarize this issue using the word "most". And indeed, having basic/extended/advanced GUI with "basic" staying the same from version to version is exactly what is needed.
Why not doing it right the first time ?
For heaven's sake, it is just about writing documents and it is also 2007. Shouldn't most of the essential features be identified and standardized by now ?
I think you are right.
Here in France we are in presidential elections right now. Politics used to say that French were not interested in politics because we had a very low participation rate in 2002, that voting was to hard, that people weren't educated enough to understand how important it was to go voting. Never, ever, they wondered if it could be because French felt that political parties had no interesting propositions to make. This year, nothing changed in the way of voting, but we broke participation records. Only thing that changed : some candidates are 20 years younger than those in 2002. They bring more interesting ideas.
When people vote has a chance to change something, they'll go voting. Period.
First, I wouldn't say "dumb", but I would bet that 90% of voters are not enough knowledgeable about CS to decide if a system is vulnerable to botnet attacks. That alone, would make elections results less authoritative.
Second, seeing how governments all around the world have been choosing crappy electronic voting machines, I am very doubtful that they will come up with a secure online voting system.
Third, I would like to point out that banking institutions (who are really paranoid about the security of some datas, just like governments should be about voting) still see their clients being scammed and deceived by simple emails or more elaborate spywares. I believe that if there was a way to prevent it, they would have been the first to discover it.
Fourth, being administrator of the family computer, I really think that I would be able to mimick any GUI the government could propose and provide this gimmick to the other members of my family, effectively stealing their vote. Would I own an internet cafe, I could do the same to people too poor to have an internet access at home. On a business network, creating a man in the middle attack would be easy (I believe that a lot of online voting supporters want to be able to vote from work)
But of course the most obvious problem of online voting is that authorities don't feel that they have to be accountable about the results of the vote.
Inside a family this can bring some problems. Husband forcing wife to vote the same "You won't vote for this feminist bitch would you ?", major children taking pressure from their parents. "You want to live in a communist state ? Let's see how you manage to pay studies without my support then". Peer pressure can be important also. I don't count how many parties with friends have gone ugly since two persons began to talk politics. And also yeah, I would like to work in a place where the pay is high, job interesting and the boss is clueless.
I also wouldn't like the cops to be able to know I voted for the party that wanted to limit their powers.
I don't want my landlord knowing that I vote for people making apartment prices low.
I don't want my doctor to know that as long as I have been alive, I have always voted for people cutting their funds.
Of course there are thousands of examples...
Sorry, I don't want to accept any leader or decision resulting from an election where some people have voted through internet.
The day this happens in my country, I really believe it will have stopped to be a democracy. Democracy is not only about votes. It is also about trust. It is based on the idea that if the leader elected is not the one you like, you can not challenge its legitimacy because more people prefer him. But if there begins to be any doubt about the legitimacy of a leader in an election, civil war becomes very close. Am I paranoiac ? Check the history of all democratic African states who sank in chaos because of election frauds.
Seriously though, these are not Alpha demographic respondents - that should be borne in mind before potentially annihilating democracy.
I couldn't agree more. I would like to point out that these words are exactly describing what is at stake : annihilation of democracy. I have talked to some of these people thinking that online voting would be confident. I heard things like "If this wasn't secure, we would hear about it.". Usually when I tell them that I am working in IT and consider these things a danger to democracy, they become really receptive. See, they trus "us", the geeky crowd, to warn them about potential danger. Don't keep quiet, speak out loud against electronic or internet voting, our voice is considered authoritative by a lot of people on this issue.
It has taken generations to build a democracy, it only takes a few hours from time to time to keep it working.
If that can help, remember while waiting that you could line up to get some meat instead.
I agree that employers should allow to take a day off, but I also think that if they don't employees should take this on their free time.
I don't understand. This is a geeky forum, with people probably more knowledgeable about crypto, internet security, privacies issues, etc... than the average Joe. But still nobody thinks that internet voting is inherently insecure. :
Let me sum all the problems
* Voter's PC vulnerability. We all know that the average computer user cannot secure its computer correctly. If some people manage to get their credit card number stolen because of spyware / scams, why wouldn't this work for a vote.
* Cryptography : A good online voting system requires people to be able to check that their vote is correctly counted while still remaining correctly anonymous. This is possible, but you have to be a crypto expert to check that system. And you know that the implementation will probably incorrect with nobody caring about it.
* Privacy : Even a correct crypto implementation would bear a privacy problem. Identites will be hidden thanks to cryptographic algorithms, but this secret should be kept at least during the whole lifetime of every voters, that would be 70 years at least. And we all know that quantum computers, if they can be made, will probably be made during this time period and will be able to break all existing practical crypto algorithms.
Conclusion : Support paper voting. You are the "computer knowledgeable elite" that people rely on to trust electronic/IT devices. Just say them risks are too high.
You are right, instead, we should let happen what would happen.
Maybe people who accept internet vote should be punished by living in a country where botnet owners can chose their government.
Then I'll need to move to Sealand
1. Simulate half of a mouse's brain.
2. Simulate half of a not-so-dead Schrodinger's cat's brain
3. Live in a constant superposition state of profit or poverty
Yeah but think about it : you would be owning Linux then !
Shouldn't it be :
Starcraft -> Worlds of Starcraft
First, this was a humor attempt, but well... Second, no, the worm doesn't propagate through email. It uses a vulnerability in the OS that allows it to infect an unprotected host connected to Internet. Try installing a windows XP with no service packs and connect it without a firewall to Internet, it should take less than one minute for your PC to be infected. The policy to activate automatic windows update dates back from the Blaster surge. Before that, people had to balance between upgrades that were known to break some things without warning and a possible threat but XP was said to be more secure than all other windows OS and so many admins wanted to review upgrades before installation. After Blaster, a lot of policies changed. Even the SP2, which takes more than one hour to install, managed to be widespread.
Mod this funny if you want but this clause actually forbids to spray a place with psychotropic products. I am sure that spraying a cloud of ecstasy, THC, or depression-inducing drug on a wide group of people (protesters) could be very useful.
We already induce burn sensation through microwaves and nausea through infra-sound. Is it so far fetched to imagine that one could create some conditions, thanks to some combinations of strident sounds, that prevents a large crowd from thinking rationally, making it easier to make it panic or flee ? We already know that some frequencies are labeled by our unconsciousness as an indication of danger. Couldn't we call that mind control ?
why disable networking on XP? If you are not a complete retard then it is extremely easy to setup and run an XP machine to be safe connected to the net. You must be super paranoid.
Some people were network administrators during the Blaster surge. We are all super paranoid toward XP now. This is our own Vietnam syndrome.
Valerie Palme is a CIA agent.