Your objections are non-problems. Your cell provider should simply ask you to verify the number you present in caller ID as belonging to you.
You have no idea of the problem, do you? The problem of fraudulent caller ID data is not cell users. Not even close. It has nothing to do with cell providers. I don't have to verify the number they send in caller ID as mine, because THEY ASSIGNED ME THAT NUMBER. I got it from them. And I don't "present" it, they do. Sheesh.
If you think that the "Microsoft Support" caller with the Indian accent, or the "$250,000 small business loan", or the "credit card debt reduction", or the "free vacation cruise" callers are using cell phones, you are ignorant at best.
If a call originates outside the U.S. jurisdiction, the caller ID should at least be plausible (that is, block it if it claims to originate in the U.S.).
You truly don't understand the system or what it is intended to convey. It isn't "country of origin ID", it's "caller ID". The information is supposed to identify the caller. If a US number correctly identifies the caller (such as a return call from a US company's offshore call center) then a US number is quite appropriate. If you call Dell, e.g., at one of their US 800 numbers, and the connection to their Indian call center drops for some reason, when they call you back the number should be Dell's US number, not some obscure Bangalore phone number. You won't recognize the foreign number, but you will recognize Dell's, and Dell's name should be on it. The person who is calling you works for Dell and they're calling you on behalf of Dell. Caller ID saying "Dell" is absolutely valid.
A call coming from outside of the country clearly can't be originating from a u.s. area code.
So what happens if it's on VoIP coming from the US-end of a VPN connection from India?
And that assumes that "caller ID" is supposed to show you the "number of origination" and not the "identification of the caller". Caller ID is intended for the latter, so the country of origin is really irrelevant. E.g., a callback from a corporate support center located in India should identify with the called ID of "that company name" and the toll-free US number for that support center.
So TFS is wrong. If they can't tell the difference, then they can't block calls with counterfeit IDs.
Well, TFS talks about caller ID numbers for numbers that are not currently in use or using certain area codes. Yes, they can detect those, and they could block those. That assumes there is a system created whereby your local telco (who sends you the caller ID info and rings your phone) can quickly query the validity of the number provided to it. That's a tall assumption.
But what you claimed was "the phone company knows it's fake because the area code doesn't match the source". That's not true. I gave you just one example of why the area code would not match the source for a perfectly valid call.
And, because it might be a valid call, your telco cannot realistically just block it because you haven't asked them to.
It obviously fake, the phone company knows it's fake because the area code doesn't match the source and TFS tells me they can block them. So why don't they?
Because it might be a valid call. And you haven't told them to.
I take my car to a local dealer for service. They hire a company to do an after-visit followup to survey my satisfaction. This is an existing commercial relationship which gets them around the DNC list. The company they hire can be anywhere on the planet, the caller ID they send is the number of the dealer. They do that so even if I don't answer the call, I know that the dealer is trying to contact me. They care.
What is actually a problem is that I'm paying for "Caller ID Name and Number" service. The number shows up, but there is rarely a name. Or maybe there really are a lot of people named "California" or "Unknown Caller".
How hard is it to create a network that actually verifies if the sender is giving the correct number?
Very. What is "the correct number"? How do you ask a telco in Romania what the "correct number" for a call is? I have a cell phone that I use while on the road for my company, but I want all returned calls to go to my receptionist who I pay to answer stuff. Tell me how my landline at my office is not the "correct number" to use in caller id when I make a cell phone call.
But all I have to do is tell people to call me back at the landline number and the problem is solved, right? Don't be stupid. I have a modem/data line that I sometimes use to make outgoing calls at work, and when I leave messages I am explicit in telling people what number to call me at. I still get dummies who ignore that and call me on the modem line because that number showed up in their caller ID. The correct number for that line is the other one.
Forget global issues,
Then forget a solution. All a robocaller has to do is use a non-US telco and you have a "global issue". Do you really think all those "Microsoft Support" calls from people with Indian accents come from a US telco?
A simple contract between networks could ensure that allowed fraud would result in financial damages.
You truly do not understand the global nature of the telephone system, or how many companies are involved.
Think about this: we don't have this problem with computers,
We don't?
Attention everyone, we've finally met someone who gets no spam.
In Sydney Australia (population about 4 million) and in most of the major cities we do have bus lanes
Thus not the same route. A special route for buses alone. Yes, if you don't follow the same route the bus can beat the car. If they go the same route, then the bus cannot beat the car.
However, if you accept that things can exist, which cannot in principle be measured,
I accept that lots of things exist, and I can in principle and in practice measure the existence of those things.
If you claim that you cannot prove the existence of a horse, then explain why you scream in pain when one kicks you.
If you wish to use the scientific method to prove the existence of a horse, here you go:
1. I hypothesize the existence of horses.
2. My null hypothesis is therefore that horses do not exist.
3. I go to a horse ranch and see a horse. This disproves the null hypothesis.
4. I refine my "experiment" (field trip to horse ranch) to try to eliminate errors in measurement. I find none. A horse is much larger than can be accounted for by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, much larger than the smallest marking on my measuring tape.
This brings up the old joke. Two hillbillies were talking about their farms. The first one tells the other that he's got two horses and he's having a hard time telling them apart. He says that first he tried cutting off the mane of one, but it grew back. Then he tried cutting off the tail, but it, too, grew back. Then he found the solution. He measured both and found out that the black one was two hands taller than the white one.
Effective immediately, 90% of US airline fleets are hereby grounded as they are unsafe.
We've leapt from an opaque claim that some hacker has "establish[ed] a presence" to an "unsafe" fleet that requires immediate grounding? Add in the fact that in TFA it tells us that the experts said they knew about this for years and it isn't a big deal. I think "unsafe" would be a bit of a deal.
This is like someone suddenly realizing that you can open an elevator access door from outside the elevator. Anyone who knows elevators knows this; it's only the ignorant who freak out when they learn this amazing hack.
There's a huge difference between being able turn off the "Fasten Seatbelts" lights, encouraging people to walk around during turbulence
You don't need to encourage people to do that by turning off the seatbelt light, they'll do it whether the light is on or not. On a flight a few days ago, one idiot got up not once but twice to use the lavatory while we were on final descent. Both times the attendant walked by to lock the lav but didn't need to because the idiot was in it and the sign said "occupied". She thought it was empty and locked by another attendant. After she strapped in, the idiot returned to his seat, leaving the lav door ajar.
And factor in the idiot attendants who tell people that the "lighted sign or placard" (regulatory language referring to the fasten seatbelt light) was just a recommendation and of course people can ignore it and get up to walk around. (Delta, I'm pointing at you, here.)
"We're interrupted by Teller, Musk's chief of staff, who informs him that as we were talking,
It's a shame he changed jobs. He and Penn were very good together. Did he slip Musk a note or text him? But then, Penn was good by himself, back when he played Spicoli. Dude.
Are you talking about the experience on-board the bus? Or the elapsed time?
Both.
Because if the latter, there are several bus routes here in Vancouver, Canada that are faster than driving that same route.
They cannot be, since buses by definition must make stops at places other than stop signs and traffic lights. Each stop takes time. A car going the same route does not make those stops. Ergo, a car can go the same route faster than a bus. In terms of math: A +xB > A for all B,x > 0. For the bus to be faster it must make fewer than zero stops or the average stop time must be less than 0. Both are physically impossible. The best the bus can do is break even when there are 0 stops.
But you've forgotten to include the wait time for that bus before you can get on it. If a bus comes just once an hour, then on average you will spend 30 minutes waiting for the bus to come by. My commute to work is 10 minutes by car, going a shorter route and without stopping every block or so to pick up or disgorge passengers. My commute by car will always be faster than taking the bus. Even assuming the same route and zero wait time, I do not stop to pick people up or drop them off, so my commute will still always be faster by car.
In fact, it takes about three minutes to walk to the closest bus stop, and two minutes from the closest stop to work. The bus would have to make the same trip I make in my car in just five minutes instead of the ten it takes me for it to break even. To do that, the bus would have to average 60MPH on city streets, when I manage 30MPH.
How did you come to those numbers? They make no sense to me. Why should there be a force higher than the atmospheric pressure?
It isn't higher than atmospheric pressure. One number is expressed as a force per unit area, the other as a total force. Both are "atmospheric pressure". That's why unit analysis is a critical part of any calculation.
What you just asked is like asking how a box of jelly beans can weigh more than one bean, since the "jelly bean" is 10gm/bean and a box of 100 would be 1kg/100 beans. One kg is much more than 10gm, isn't it?
On the other hand, axioms when appropriately applied save a lot of time trying to prove useful things that cannot be proven. Like the five Euclidean geometry axioms. If you waste your life trying to prove that "parallel lines never intersect", then you've lost all the cooler and useful stuff that Euclid et.al. developed out of those five.
science is not about proving or disproving.
It is about measuring and collecting data in a repeatable way.
Thank you for proving true my comment later where I say a refresher is required even here every so often.
You can collect all the data you want in a "repeatable way" and still not be a scientist. It's only when you decide what data you need to collect and what it means, based on hypotheses and experiments to disprove a hypothesis, does it become science.
For example, I can collect the outside temperature at noon every day for ten years and it will mean nothing, despite being "repeatable". It is only when I look at the trends or patterns and create a testable hypothesis about "why" does it become "science". Until then, it's "technology" at best. Imagine all the people who saw apples falling from trees before Newton hypothesized the theory of gravity. Were they all "scientists" because they were collecting the same data in a repeatable way?
Then it is about testing if those predictions can be tested successfully.
What does testing a prediction successfully mean? I predict the moon will disappear at midnight tonight. I can test that prediction successfully by waiting until midnight and looking up (if there are no clouds here.) I've tested my prediction successfully, but what does it mean?
What about them? Neither TCAS nor ADS-B have direct input into aircraft controls. ADS-B provides information to the pilot about nearby aircraft. TCAS provides the same kind of information. TCAS has the added provision that pilots are expected to obey conflict resolution commands generated by TCAS, but not when the safety of flight is involved. Explicit exemption for that. If you are 100' AGL and someone tricks your TCAS into commanding "descend", then it will be ignored. The aircraft doesn't do it automatically.
GPS is the only one of the three where the RF input goes to direct control of the aircraft.
So, maybe they injected malware into a GPS receiver
GPS receivers do not update their firmware from signals they receive from the satellite. The autopilot does not update its firmware from signals provided by the GPS. You could spoof a GPS signal, and everyone knows that.
The claim was that the hacker was "able to establish a presence on the systems of the aircraft." Further, if you read TFA itself, it says that the engineers know about it and it isn't a problem. It's the pilots who complained that they "trusted it like God" or something like that. It certainly doesn't sound like they've broken into the flight controls to me.
the entire application would need a full regression test for safety/certification purposes.
It is a reasonable metric, but ridiculous application. Yes, recertifying the specific piece of avionics that is involved may cost $1 million when you consider the time and manpower involved. That may cover 1 or 1000 lines of code. It won't be Southwest that pays this, and maybe not even Boeing. It will be the manufacturer of the system that needs fixin'.
But this is a ridiculous application of the metric when there is the claim that it would bankrupt Southwest to implement it. Implementing the change would be part of the regular maintenance process, probably less than half an hour per airplane, performed by a maintenance technician when the aircraft comes in for a regular inspection. It won't cost anywhere near $1 million per aircraft.
I deal with a radio system in a small fleet of aircraft. It may take me an hour or two to change and verify the "code plug" (channel programming) that goes into the radio. At that point I hand the code plug out to other people who need about five minutes per radio to load it. Software updates are the same kind of thing.
What is typical for/. hyperbole, the claim isn't "we can crash aircraft", it is "we were able to establish a presence on the systems of the aircraft". Wow. A "presence". That can be anything from causing uncommanded flight maneuvers (flight into the ground, e.g.) to "we can read the airspeed sensors remotely."
Given that it is an "RF" entry path, it is most likely through the ACARS data stream. Since we can actually fly airplanes without that system, the simplest method of "fixing" the problem in the short term is to turn the ACARS system off until it can be updated. That would avoid a global grounding of a fleet nicely.
Who, among Slashdot's esteemed editorial board, decided, the publication's audience needs a refresher on what scientific method is?
Well, anyone who thinks the Rolling Stone/Elon Musk got it right does need a refresher. And other comments here also show that it is important every so often.
This seems to be running fast and loose with the requirements of experimentation. One really needs to prove a hypothesis otherwise the effort is somewhat incomplete.
No, that is not the scientific method. You cannot prove a hypothesis. You can only disprove the null hypothesis.
What? Let me expand on that. Let's use an old example. Galileo at one time hypothesized, based on observations and thought, that gravity should cause two objects of different masses to accelerate at the same rate and go the same distance in the same time. But clearly, dropping a feather and a bowling ball shows that this cannot be true. Ahhh, if the hypothesis was true, then there must be a reason why feathers take so long to fall. Hypothesis: air resistance. Let's design an experiment to prove this. Well, you can't actually prove that air resistance is the cause. You can only disprove the null hypothesis, which in this case is "air resistance has nothing to do with the result." That one is easy to disprove. Simply remove air from a long tube and drop the objects without air. Since the feather and bowling ball now reach the bottom at close to the same time, the null hypothesis has been disproven. Air resistance does have an effect, and we now have support for the original hypothesis. But not proof.
"Close to" or "as close as we can measure" is not "the same time." If our original hypothesis is true, then there must be some other cause for the difference. For more recent, more complicated things, scientific lifetimes are spent in both hypothesizing about the remaining causes or improving measurement techniques to make the measurement error so small that "close" starts to approach "same". (And there are lots of things we learn as we start to account for what we thought was "measurement error" and really wasn't.)
More complicated systems create more interactions, and experiments must be more carefully designed. For example, not too long ago some radio astronomers were seeing signals that looked too regular to be random. They removed all known hypothesized causes other than true alien signals. Did this prove the hypothesis that they were alien signals? Sorry, no. They finally found the cause: the microwave oven in the snack area in the building next door.
But Musk is not anywhere close to the scientific process, either. His step 3 is: "3. Develop axioms based on the evidence, and try to assign a probability of truth to each one."
What? An axiom is defined as " a self-evident truth that requires no proof." Some dictionaries include "cannot be proven" as part of the definition, with the example "For every two points P and Q there is a unique line that contains both P and Q".
So, creating axioms from evidence is not science. Creating HYPOTHESES is science. Hypotheses are statements that require, even beg for, attempts to be disproven. Axioms are what are used to build universes, like the five axioms of Euclidean geometry. You cannot prove any of the five, they are the assumed truths. In fact, there are two other geometric systems (elliptic and hyperbolic) that are based on changing the axiom regarding parallel lines that Euclidean geometry assumes.
If Musk assumes the truth he seeks to prove, then he's failing at science.
I can't disprove God exists, but to make the assumption that the entity does exist for this reason is lazy and dishonest.
No, it is neither lazy nor dishonest. You're trying to apply scientific method to religion, which is like comparing apples and oranges. You cannot prove God exists, and you cannot prove He does not. This puts the question well outside the scope of the scientific method. The only dishonesty would be trying to apply the scientific method to a question that we know cannot be answered that way.
No, as I said before -- why would they need to hack into the TV when they can just pay Samsung to offer it as a "feature" -- "We'll pay you $xx for every TV to install our content monitoring software,
Yeah, Samsung, the only manufacturer of TVs in the world, would degrade the performance of their smart TVs by programming them to preferentially select low-signal Xfinity WiFi access points over full-strength, high-bandwidth access points right next to the TV. All so that some broadcasters can listen to the movies you are watching. Yes, that seems like a reasonable thing to be paranoid about.
It's a win-win for Samsung & Xfinity, they get valuable data about their customers,
It's not a win for Samsung. They already have a direct pipe to their customers because they are already snooping on everything you do, aren't they? It costs Samsung money to maintain code that won't work for most of the planet, including a huge chunk of the US market.
It's also not a win for Xfinity, because you are claiming that YOUR TV will connect to SOMEONE ELSES Xfinity WiFi. You aren't their customer, so they aren't gathering any information about their customer by snooping on you. Do you think it is valuable information for Xfinity to know that "someone nearby to one of our customers has a Samsung TV and is watching a pirated copy of "Debbie Does The Baltimore Colts" but we don't know who it is or where they live"? That's a "win" for Xfinity? Can we get access to the huge data store they have of "people somewhere who are watching something"?
Why would a TV that's programmed to connect to an Xfinity wifi network try to connect to my network, which has a completely separate name?
Because it has a better signal.
Why haven't you put your TV in a Faraday cage and solved the problem, instead of spending hours trying to dream up improbable scenarios?
Why? Your ISP is a company that actually has access to your data. And if you trust your WiFi, then why are you worried about WiFi systems that your TV won't connect to? Do you really believe that Comcast has hacked into your TV to program it to always seek a Comcast WiFi router in preference to the best signal -- from your own, trusted router?
there's nothing stopping my TV from seeing the half dozen XFinity nearby Wifi networks from my neighbors.
Other than the fact that it would connect to yours first (strongest signal), distance, and your failure to wrap it in tinfoil. If you are so scared that Comcast is spying on what movies you watch, why haven't you put a Faraday cage around your TV?
There's always "that guy" in every thread about traditional TV, and I guess this time it'll be me.
With the number of "that guys" who show up every time cable TV is mentioned, I'm wondering if this kind of topic still fits the "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters". So many cord-cutters speak up about how they cut the cord and love it that TV can no longer be considered "stuff that matters" to this crowd.
It would be like trying to discuss buggy whips on the Dodge Ram mailing list.
I just love it when I pay $25 for a dvd to be treated to 10 minutes of why I wouldn't steal a car
Every time I hear this kind of thing it takes a few minutes before I remember that some folks don't use simple tools like mplayer to watch DVDs and subject themselves to the lock-in of a DVD player and mandatory menus and crap.
The only time I see such ads is when I'm trying to find the content tracks, and then only a second or two.
Slashdot Mirror
Your objections are non-problems. Your cell provider should simply ask you to verify the number you present in caller ID as belonging to you.
You have no idea of the problem, do you? The problem of fraudulent caller ID data is not cell users. Not even close. It has nothing to do with cell providers. I don't have to verify the number they send in caller ID as mine, because THEY ASSIGNED ME THAT NUMBER. I got it from them. And I don't "present" it, they do. Sheesh.
If you think that the "Microsoft Support" caller with the Indian accent, or the "$250,000 small business loan", or the "credit card debt reduction", or the "free vacation cruise" callers are using cell phones, you are ignorant at best.
If a call originates outside the U.S. jurisdiction, the caller ID should at least be plausible (that is, block it if it claims to originate in the U.S.).
You truly don't understand the system or what it is intended to convey. It isn't "country of origin ID", it's "caller ID". The information is supposed to identify the caller. If a US number correctly identifies the caller (such as a return call from a US company's offshore call center) then a US number is quite appropriate. If you call Dell, e.g., at one of their US 800 numbers, and the connection to their Indian call center drops for some reason, when they call you back the number should be Dell's US number, not some obscure Bangalore phone number. You won't recognize the foreign number, but you will recognize Dell's, and Dell's name should be on it. The person who is calling you works for Dell and they're calling you on behalf of Dell. Caller ID saying "Dell" is absolutely valid.
A call coming from outside of the country clearly can't be originating from a u.s. area code.
So what happens if it's on VoIP coming from the US-end of a VPN connection from India?
And that assumes that "caller ID" is supposed to show you the "number of origination" and not the "identification of the caller". Caller ID is intended for the latter, so the country of origin is really irrelevant. E.g., a callback from a corporate support center located in India should identify with the called ID of "that company name" and the toll-free US number for that support center.
So TFS is wrong. If they can't tell the difference, then they can't block calls with counterfeit IDs.
Well, TFS talks about caller ID numbers for numbers that are not currently in use or using certain area codes. Yes, they can detect those, and they could block those. That assumes there is a system created whereby your local telco (who sends you the caller ID info and rings your phone) can quickly query the validity of the number provided to it. That's a tall assumption.
But what you claimed was "the phone company knows it's fake because the area code doesn't match the source". That's not true. I gave you just one example of why the area code would not match the source for a perfectly valid call.
And, because it might be a valid call, your telco cannot realistically just block it because you haven't asked them to.
Amtrak train - scheduled to leave around 10, give or take an hour.
That's exemplary service for Amtrak. The last Amtrak experience I had was when the train I was dropping someone off for was four hours late.
It obviously fake, the phone company knows it's fake because the area code doesn't match the source and TFS tells me they can block them. So why don't they?
Because it might be a valid call. And you haven't told them to.
I take my car to a local dealer for service. They hire a company to do an after-visit followup to survey my satisfaction. This is an existing commercial relationship which gets them around the DNC list. The company they hire can be anywhere on the planet, the caller ID they send is the number of the dealer. They do that so even if I don't answer the call, I know that the dealer is trying to contact me. They care.
What is actually a problem is that I'm paying for "Caller ID Name and Number" service. The number shows up, but there is rarely a name. Or maybe there really are a lot of people named "California" or "Unknown Caller".
How hard is it to create a network that actually verifies if the sender is giving the correct number?
Very. What is "the correct number"? How do you ask a telco in Romania what the "correct number" for a call is? I have a cell phone that I use while on the road for my company, but I want all returned calls to go to my receptionist who I pay to answer stuff. Tell me how my landline at my office is not the "correct number" to use in caller id when I make a cell phone call.
But all I have to do is tell people to call me back at the landline number and the problem is solved, right? Don't be stupid. I have a modem/data line that I sometimes use to make outgoing calls at work, and when I leave messages I am explicit in telling people what number to call me at. I still get dummies who ignore that and call me on the modem line because that number showed up in their caller ID. The correct number for that line is the other one.
Forget global issues,
Then forget a solution. All a robocaller has to do is use a non-US telco and you have a "global issue". Do you really think all those "Microsoft Support" calls from people with Indian accents come from a US telco?
A simple contract between networks could ensure that allowed fraud would result in financial damages.
You truly do not understand the global nature of the telephone system, or how many companies are involved.
Think about this: we don't have this problem with computers,
We don't?
Attention everyone, we've finally met someone who gets no spam.
What's a "Ralph's"...?
It's not a "Ralph's", it is a "Ralphs".
In Sydney Australia (population about 4 million) and in most of the major cities we do have bus lanes
Thus not the same route. A special route for buses alone. Yes, if you don't follow the same route the bus can beat the car. If they go the same route, then the bus cannot beat the car.
However, if you accept that things can exist, which cannot in principle be measured,
I accept that lots of things exist, and I can in principle and in practice measure the existence of those things.
If you claim that you cannot prove the existence of a horse, then explain why you scream in pain when one kicks you.
If you wish to use the scientific method to prove the existence of a horse, here you go:
1. I hypothesize the existence of horses.
2. My null hypothesis is therefore that horses do not exist.
3. I go to a horse ranch and see a horse. This disproves the null hypothesis.
4. I refine my "experiment" (field trip to horse ranch) to try to eliminate errors in measurement. I find none. A horse is much larger than can be accounted for by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, much larger than the smallest marking on my measuring tape.
This brings up the old joke. Two hillbillies were talking about their farms. The first one tells the other that he's got two horses and he's having a hard time telling them apart. He says that first he tried cutting off the mane of one, but it grew back. Then he tried cutting off the tail, but it, too, grew back. Then he found the solution. He measured both and found out that the black one was two hands taller than the white one.
Effective immediately, 90% of US airline fleets are hereby grounded as they are unsafe.
We've leapt from an opaque claim that some hacker has "establish[ed] a presence" to an "unsafe" fleet that requires immediate grounding? Add in the fact that in TFA it tells us that the experts said they knew about this for years and it isn't a big deal. I think "unsafe" would be a bit of a deal.
This is like someone suddenly realizing that you can open an elevator access door from outside the elevator. Anyone who knows elevators knows this; it's only the ignorant who freak out when they learn this amazing hack.
There's a huge difference between being able turn off the "Fasten Seatbelts" lights, encouraging people to walk around during turbulence
You don't need to encourage people to do that by turning off the seatbelt light, they'll do it whether the light is on or not. On a flight a few days ago, one idiot got up not once but twice to use the lavatory while we were on final descent. Both times the attendant walked by to lock the lav but didn't need to because the idiot was in it and the sign said "occupied". She thought it was empty and locked by another attendant. After she strapped in, the idiot returned to his seat, leaving the lav door ajar.
And factor in the idiot attendants who tell people that the "lighted sign or placard" (regulatory language referring to the fasten seatbelt light) was just a recommendation and of course people can ignore it and get up to walk around. (Delta, I'm pointing at you, here.)
"We're interrupted by Teller, Musk's chief of staff, who informs him that as we were talking,
It's a shame he changed jobs. He and Penn were very good together. Did he slip Musk a note or text him? But then, Penn was good by himself, back when he played Spicoli. Dude.
Are you talking about the experience on-board the bus? Or the elapsed time?
Both.
Because if the latter, there are several bus routes here in Vancouver, Canada that are faster than driving that same route.
They cannot be, since buses by definition must make stops at places other than stop signs and traffic lights. Each stop takes time. A car going the same route does not make those stops. Ergo, a car can go the same route faster than a bus. In terms of math: A +xB > A for all B,x > 0. For the bus to be faster it must make fewer than zero stops or the average stop time must be less than 0. Both are physically impossible. The best the bus can do is break even when there are 0 stops.
But you've forgotten to include the wait time for that bus before you can get on it. If a bus comes just once an hour, then on average you will spend 30 minutes waiting for the bus to come by. My commute to work is 10 minutes by car, going a shorter route and without stopping every block or so to pick up or disgorge passengers. My commute by car will always be faster than taking the bus. Even assuming the same route and zero wait time, I do not stop to pick people up or drop them off, so my commute will still always be faster by car.
In fact, it takes about three minutes to walk to the closest bus stop, and two minutes from the closest stop to work. The bus would have to make the same trip I make in my car in just five minutes instead of the ten it takes me for it to break even. To do that, the bus would have to average 60MPH on city streets, when I manage 30MPH.
How did you come to those numbers? They make no sense to me. Why should there be a force higher than the atmospheric pressure?
It isn't higher than atmospheric pressure. One number is expressed as a force per unit area, the other as a total force. Both are "atmospheric pressure". That's why unit analysis is a critical part of any calculation.
What you just asked is like asking how a box of jelly beans can weigh more than one bean, since the "jelly bean" is 10gm/bean and a box of 100 would be 1kg/100 beans. One kg is much more than 10gm, isn't it?
AKA "axioms are overrated".
On the other hand, axioms when appropriately applied save a lot of time trying to prove useful things that cannot be proven. Like the five Euclidean geometry axioms. If you waste your life trying to prove that "parallel lines never intersect", then you've lost all the cooler and useful stuff that Euclid et.al. developed out of those five.
science is not about proving or disproving. It is about measuring and collecting data in a repeatable way.
Thank you for proving true my comment later where I say a refresher is required even here every so often.
You can collect all the data you want in a "repeatable way" and still not be a scientist. It's only when you decide what data you need to collect and what it means, based on hypotheses and experiments to disprove a hypothesis, does it become science.
For example, I can collect the outside temperature at noon every day for ten years and it will mean nothing, despite being "repeatable". It is only when I look at the trends or patterns and create a testable hypothesis about "why" does it become "science". Until then, it's "technology" at best. Imagine all the people who saw apples falling from trees before Newton hypothesized the theory of gravity. Were they all "scientists" because they were collecting the same data in a repeatable way?
Then it is about testing if those predictions can be tested successfully.
What does testing a prediction successfully mean? I predict the moon will disappear at midnight tonight. I can test that prediction successfully by waiting until midnight and looking up (if there are no clouds here.) I've tested my prediction successfully, but what does it mean?
But nothing is ever proved.
Yes, that's what I said.
What about TCAS, GPS, ADS-B?
What about them? Neither TCAS nor ADS-B have direct input into aircraft controls. ADS-B provides information to the pilot about nearby aircraft. TCAS provides the same kind of information. TCAS has the added provision that pilots are expected to obey conflict resolution commands generated by TCAS, but not when the safety of flight is involved. Explicit exemption for that. If you are 100' AGL and someone tricks your TCAS into commanding "descend", then it will be ignored. The aircraft doesn't do it automatically.
GPS is the only one of the three where the RF input goes to direct control of the aircraft.
So, maybe they injected malware into a GPS receiver
GPS receivers do not update their firmware from signals they receive from the satellite. The autopilot does not update its firmware from signals provided by the GPS. You could spoof a GPS signal, and everyone knows that.
The claim was that the hacker was "able to establish a presence on the systems of the aircraft." Further, if you read TFA itself, it says that the engineers know about it and it isn't a problem. It's the pilots who complained that they "trusted it like God" or something like that. It certainly doesn't sound like they've broken into the flight controls to me.
the entire application would need a full regression test for safety/certification purposes.
It is a reasonable metric, but ridiculous application. Yes, recertifying the specific piece of avionics that is involved may cost $1 million when you consider the time and manpower involved. That may cover 1 or 1000 lines of code. It won't be Southwest that pays this, and maybe not even Boeing. It will be the manufacturer of the system that needs fixin'.
But this is a ridiculous application of the metric when there is the claim that it would bankrupt Southwest to implement it. Implementing the change would be part of the regular maintenance process, probably less than half an hour per airplane, performed by a maintenance technician when the aircraft comes in for a regular inspection. It won't cost anywhere near $1 million per aircraft.
I deal with a radio system in a small fleet of aircraft. It may take me an hour or two to change and verify the "code plug" (channel programming) that goes into the radio. At that point I hand the code plug out to other people who need about five minutes per radio to load it. Software updates are the same kind of thing.
What is typical for /. hyperbole, the claim isn't "we can crash aircraft", it is "we were able to establish a presence on the systems of the aircraft". Wow. A "presence". That can be anything from causing uncommanded flight maneuvers (flight into the ground, e.g.) to "we can read the airspeed sensors remotely."
Given that it is an "RF" entry path, it is most likely through the ACARS data stream. Since we can actually fly airplanes without that system, the simplest method of "fixing" the problem in the short term is to turn the ACARS system off until it can be updated. That would avoid a global grounding of a fleet nicely.
Who, among Slashdot's esteemed editorial board, decided, the publication's audience needs a refresher on what scientific method is?
Well, anyone who thinks the Rolling Stone/Elon Musk got it right does need a refresher. And other comments here also show that it is important every so often.
This seems to be running fast and loose with the requirements of experimentation. One really needs to prove a hypothesis otherwise the effort is somewhat incomplete.
No, that is not the scientific method. You cannot prove a hypothesis. You can only disprove the null hypothesis.
What? Let me expand on that. Let's use an old example. Galileo at one time hypothesized, based on observations and thought, that gravity should cause two objects of different masses to accelerate at the same rate and go the same distance in the same time. But clearly, dropping a feather and a bowling ball shows that this cannot be true. Ahhh, if the hypothesis was true, then there must be a reason why feathers take so long to fall. Hypothesis: air resistance. Let's design an experiment to prove this. Well, you can't actually prove that air resistance is the cause. You can only disprove the null hypothesis, which in this case is "air resistance has nothing to do with the result." That one is easy to disprove. Simply remove air from a long tube and drop the objects without air. Since the feather and bowling ball now reach the bottom at close to the same time, the null hypothesis has been disproven. Air resistance does have an effect, and we now have support for the original hypothesis. But not proof. "Close to" or "as close as we can measure" is not "the same time." If our original hypothesis is true, then there must be some other cause for the difference. For more recent, more complicated things, scientific lifetimes are spent in both hypothesizing about the remaining causes or improving measurement techniques to make the measurement error so small that "close" starts to approach "same". (And there are lots of things we learn as we start to account for what we thought was "measurement error" and really wasn't.)
More complicated systems create more interactions, and experiments must be more carefully designed. For example, not too long ago some radio astronomers were seeing signals that looked too regular to be random. They removed all known hypothesized causes other than true alien signals. Did this prove the hypothesis that they were alien signals? Sorry, no. They finally found the cause: the microwave oven in the snack area in the building next door.
But Musk is not anywhere close to the scientific process, either. His step 3 is: "3. Develop axioms based on the evidence, and try to assign a probability of truth to each one."
What? An axiom is defined as " a self-evident truth that requires no proof." Some dictionaries include "cannot be proven" as part of the definition, with the example "For every two points P and Q there is a unique line that contains both P and Q".
So, creating axioms from evidence is not science. Creating HYPOTHESES is science. Hypotheses are statements that require, even beg for, attempts to be disproven. Axioms are what are used to build universes, like the five axioms of Euclidean geometry. You cannot prove any of the five, they are the assumed truths. In fact, there are two other geometric systems (elliptic and hyperbolic) that are based on changing the axiom regarding parallel lines that Euclidean geometry assumes.
If Musk assumes the truth he seeks to prove, then he's failing at science.
I can't disprove God exists, but to make the assumption that the entity does exist for this reason is lazy and dishonest.
No, it is neither lazy nor dishonest. You're trying to apply scientific method to religion, which is like comparing apples and oranges. You cannot prove God exists, and you cannot prove He does not. This puts the question well outside the scope of the scientific method. The only dishonesty would be trying to apply the scientific method to a question that we know cannot be answered that way.
No, as I said before -- why would they need to hack into the TV when they can just pay Samsung to offer it as a "feature" -- "We'll pay you $xx for every TV to install our content monitoring software,
Yeah, Samsung, the only manufacturer of TVs in the world, would degrade the performance of their smart TVs by programming them to preferentially select low-signal Xfinity WiFi access points over full-strength, high-bandwidth access points right next to the TV. All so that some broadcasters can listen to the movies you are watching. Yes, that seems like a reasonable thing to be paranoid about.
It's a win-win for Samsung & Xfinity, they get valuable data about their customers,
It's not a win for Samsung. They already have a direct pipe to their customers because they are already snooping on everything you do, aren't they? It costs Samsung money to maintain code that won't work for most of the planet, including a huge chunk of the US market.
It's also not a win for Xfinity, because you are claiming that YOUR TV will connect to SOMEONE ELSES Xfinity WiFi. You aren't their customer, so they aren't gathering any information about their customer by snooping on you. Do you think it is valuable information for Xfinity to know that "someone nearby to one of our customers has a Samsung TV and is watching a pirated copy of "Debbie Does The Baltimore Colts" but we don't know who it is or where they live"? That's a "win" for Xfinity? Can we get access to the huge data store they have of "people somewhere who are watching something"?
Why would a TV that's programmed to connect to an Xfinity wifi network try to connect to my network, which has a completely separate name?
Because it has a better signal.
Why haven't you put your TV in a Faraday cage and solved the problem, instead of spending hours trying to dream up improbable scenarios?
I've read about some smart TVs that actually wouldn't work until they were connected to the internet.
Return it, it is clearly broken. Or, let it connect until it is happy and then cut the cable.
I trust my ISP and my Wifi router+firewall.
Why? Your ISP is a company that actually has access to your data. And if you trust your WiFi, then why are you worried about WiFi systems that your TV won't connect to? Do you really believe that Comcast has hacked into your TV to program it to always seek a Comcast WiFi router in preference to the best signal -- from your own, trusted router?
there's nothing stopping my TV from seeing the half dozen XFinity nearby Wifi networks from my neighbors.
Other than the fact that it would connect to yours first (strongest signal), distance, and your failure to wrap it in tinfoil. If you are so scared that Comcast is spying on what movies you watch, why haven't you put a Faraday cage around your TV?
There's always "that guy" in every thread about traditional TV, and I guess this time it'll be me.
With the number of "that guys" who show up every time cable TV is mentioned, I'm wondering if this kind of topic still fits the "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters". So many cord-cutters speak up about how they cut the cord and love it that TV can no longer be considered "stuff that matters" to this crowd.
It would be like trying to discuss buggy whips on the Dodge Ram mailing list.
I just love it when I pay $25 for a dvd to be treated to 10 minutes of why I wouldn't steal a car
Every time I hear this kind of thing it takes a few minutes before I remember that some folks don't use simple tools like mplayer to watch DVDs and subject themselves to the lock-in of a DVD player and mandatory menus and crap.
The only time I see such ads is when I'm trying to find the content tracks, and then only a second or two.