I saw exactly this at the National Archives in College Park, MD. I told the local IT bubbas, but they just gave me blank stares. It was particularly disturbing because the average researcher at the archives won't have the technical sophistication to realize what's going on, and will then take their zombified system back to a university network.
I'm not trying to transform an advantage into a disadvantage, but point out that it has aspects of both which we would be foolish to ignore. Gaining a new technological capability can have positive effects, but its is something that should be done with an eye to minimizing the hazards. There can be second and third order effects when the new change interacts with existing technologies and social structures. This is the example I had in mind when I wrote the original post:
- Electric lights: Sounds like a great idea, as it well should. Be able to have light whenever and wherever you want it. It expands the freedom for work or play around the clock. When it interacted with the growth of industry, it also meant that factories could be run 24 hours a day. There was certainly pressure on the factory owners to do that, because if they didn't another owner would and could gain a major advantage. It took decades of labor strife to gradually set down laws and practices that equitably balanced the new situation. I'm not reductively saying all this flowed from the electric light, but advances of that sort had major societal impact which took a long time and much effort to sort out (and for those working in sweatshops in Bangladesh, may not have been sorted out yet).
How can the potential elimination of sleep not have similar effects? Yes, it's all well and good that many people will have the autonomy to control the implications for themselves. Many of the slashdotters reading this will be able to decide to not sleep for three days in order to party, or work on a hobby, or on a project for themselves, or even on a project for their employer because they freely choose to do so. My point is that there will be people who won't have that autonomy and will feel compelled to work 72 hours straight because that's the only way to keep their jobs. If we're going to embrace that kind of technology, we should be aware of the hazards.
is if this works exactly as described. How long will it take until employers (or anyone who demands time in our lives) expects us to be available for 18 or 20 hour days? How disruptive would this be to society? If expectations change, anyone who doesn't want to disrupt their life to the extent that might be demanded will be at a competitive disadvantage.
One night while doing some shift work (6PM-6AM), one of my co-workers went home for "lunch" at 2AM. He found that his wife wasn't home and, worse, had left their 4 year old son unattended. This was the second time that had happened, so he decided to investigate. The next time we were working night shifts, he put a GPS under a blanket that happened to be in the back of their hatchback. Twelve hours later (again after his wife hadn't been home at "lunchtime") he retrieved the GPS. He followed the recorded track around, and then along with a few friends, staked out the route the next time we were on mids. One of them spotted her in a parking lot and videotaped her from a distance for the next few hours. He contacted the cops (this being an military base and overseas) and turned over the tape. The police investigated, determined she was running a prostitution ring, and had her deported back to her country of origin. My co-worker was able to both successfuly divorce her and get custody of the child.
Realistically, all the feds are trying to do is keep pace with the advance of technology. They've had the ability to tap phones for as long as they have been around. Even if they were able to listen to and record every single call made, someone still has to transcribe the call. Even with the transcriptions done, someone else has to put the pieces together to make it useful intelligence, otherwise it remains valueless information. Intel work gets HARDER when the mass of data increases exponentially.
One way to make the attackers task more difficult would be to encrypt the boot partition with an on-the-fly encryption program like drivecrypt pluspack or safeboot.
Drivecrypt
or
Safeboot
Admittedly, these sorts of programs won't prevent someone with physical access from shutting down the machine, but they will make data compromise more difficult.
Slashdot Mirror
I saw exactly this at the National Archives in College Park, MD. I told the local IT bubbas, but they just gave me blank stares. It was particularly disturbing because the average researcher at the archives won't have the technical sophistication to realize what's going on, and will then take their zombified system back to a university network.
I'm not trying to transform an advantage into a disadvantage, but point out that it has aspects of both which we would be foolish to ignore. Gaining a new technological capability can have positive effects, but its is something that should be done with an eye to minimizing the hazards. There can be second and third order effects when the new change interacts with existing technologies and social structures. This is the example I had in mind when I wrote the original post:
- Electric lights: Sounds like a great idea, as it well should. Be able to have light whenever and wherever you want it. It expands the freedom for work or play around the clock. When it interacted with the growth of industry, it also meant that factories could be run 24 hours a day. There was certainly pressure on the factory owners to do that, because if they didn't another owner would and could gain a major advantage. It took decades of labor strife to gradually set down laws and practices that equitably balanced the new situation. I'm not reductively saying all this flowed from the electric light, but advances of that sort had major societal impact which took a long time and much effort to sort out (and for those working in sweatshops in Bangladesh, may not have been sorted out yet).
How can the potential elimination of sleep not have similar effects? Yes, it's all well and good that many people will have the autonomy to control the implications for themselves. Many of the slashdotters reading this will be able to decide to not sleep for three days in order to party, or work on a hobby, or on a project for themselves, or even on a project for their employer because they freely choose to do so. My point is that there will be people who won't have that autonomy and will feel compelled to work 72 hours straight because that's the only way to keep their jobs. If we're going to embrace that kind of technology, we should be aware of the hazards.
is if this works exactly as described. How long will it take until employers (or anyone who demands time in our lives) expects us to be available for 18 or 20 hour days? How disruptive would this be to society? If expectations change, anyone who doesn't want to disrupt their life to the extent that might be demanded will be at a competitive disadvantage.
the bad news is that it has to be Rush.
One night while doing some shift work (6PM-6AM), one of my co-workers went home for "lunch" at 2AM. He found that his wife wasn't home and, worse, had left their 4 year old son unattended. This was the second time that had happened, so he decided to investigate. The next time we were working night shifts, he put a GPS under a blanket that happened to be in the back of their hatchback. Twelve hours later (again after his wife hadn't been home at "lunchtime") he retrieved the GPS. He followed the recorded track around, and then along with a few friends, staked out the route the next time we were on mids. One of them spotted her in a parking lot and videotaped her from a distance for the next few hours. He contacted the cops (this being an military base and overseas) and turned over the tape. The police investigated, determined she was running a prostitution ring, and had her deported back to her country of origin. My co-worker was able to both successfuly divorce her and get custody of the child.
Realistically, all the feds are trying to do is keep pace with the advance of technology. They've had the ability to tap phones for as long as they have been around. Even if they were able to listen to and record every single call made, someone still has to transcribe the call. Even with the transcriptions done, someone else has to put the pieces together to make it useful intelligence, otherwise it remains valueless information. Intel work gets HARDER when the mass of data increases exponentially.
One way to make the attackers task more difficult would be to encrypt the boot partition with an on-the-fly encryption program like drivecrypt pluspack or safeboot. Drivecrypt or Safeboot Admittedly, these sorts of programs won't prevent someone with physical access from shutting down the machine, but they will make data compromise more difficult.