In the Google example shown in TFA, its "easy" to spot a hijack by looking at the URL. But if Google or other search engines were to support IDN (Internationalized Domain Names), then it would be even easier for a criminal to hijack a bank's login page with the IDN browser exploit.
You are forgetting one model: the sponsorship model
Absolutely true, you identified another model. So:
6.Sponsorship model: People and companies donate money to worthy, non-profit content creators (e.g. NPR). Sucks because of leechs.
It's definitely another model that will be in the mix., although our local public TV stations seem to be morphing into ad-supported stations given the number of thinly veiled "sponsored-by" promos.
I don't see what the big deal is. The print version of news papers is an ad supported model. The physical cost of the paper barely supports the printing and distribution. They just need to get local companies to buy ads on the website.
Very good point, the cost structure of newspapers would be much better without all that bulky paper, printing, and distribution. Ad-supported hardcopy works, in part, because newspaper sales people can convince businesses that it works without any inconvenient data to show otherwise.
The best feature of online advertising is that you can measure the response via click-throughs, cookies, and tracking unique visitors. The worst feature of online advertising is that advertisers can measure the response and discover that its not working. Sure, ad-supported can work online, but only as long as ad-blockers don't become too popular or people stop clicking-through and buying from online advertisers.
I think all the model suck in some way so that no single model will ever dominate.
Ad-Supported Model: Consumers get the content for free as long as they are willing to watch & click-through enough ads. Sucks because people hate/block/avoid ads (insufficient revenues), although Google might make this work.
BBC Model: An annual government tax on PCs is used to fund a quasi-independent news gathering organization. Sucks because it adds a tax, will never happen in the U.S. (due to freedom of the press and government non-compete issues), but it could happen in the UK.
a la Carte Model: Every content creator charges their own subcription. Sucks if you want to read more than one source.
Flat-Rate Integrator Model: A subscriber pays a monthly subscription for all the news/content aggregated by a given company (AOL, Yahoo, Google?). Sucks because snooty brand-conscious content providers (NYT, WSJ, etc.) will never join an aggregator -- they will prefer to force people to pay separate subscriptions for separate content sources.
Micopayment Model: A subscriber pays-per-view, the charge showing up on their monthly ISP/cellphone/credit card bill. Sucks because the cost of admin and dealing with disputed charges wipes out most of the revenues. Sucks because people hate being nickled and dimed to death.
I guess we will see which sucky model gets adopted. I suspect they all will with ad-supported and a la carte being more common than the others.
This article shows that "short range" RF technologies such as bluetooth or RFID are only short range in the context of a particular transceiver. If someone wants to access an RF device from a greater distance, they need only build a high-gain antenna.
As much as people hated the old Mac Cube, it does illustrate that proper thermal design can provide passive cooling. A specially design PC motherboard, CPU, GPU, and PSU could be built around a heat-convecting chimney -- the more power needed, the taller the chimney. Of course, it would be hard to do this with off-the-shelf modules, but if a design-oriented company wanted a fanless PC, they could do it.
The total bandwidth seems small, only 50 MHz which is less than the 94 MHz of space available for 802.11b. Throw in the need for non-overlapping channels, interference, etc. and this version of wireless broadband will probably offer less bandwidth that original WiFi.
I can only hope that the higher emitted power will let service providers boost SNR (rather than space-out the antennas further) to provide more digital bandwidth within their limited radio bandwidth allotment.
In particular, you don't need a brilliant idea to start a startup around.
I'd like to second this idea and expand on it. Customers, especially business customers, prize consistent performance above uber-brilliance and cutting-edge innovation. They (and I) would rather buy a reliable product/service and give up on a few cutting-edge features (compare Google's plain text to Yahoo's overloaded graphics).
Our company does well because we always deliver what we promise and try to under-promise/over-deliver if possible. The result is that we don't have to spend any money on marketing because referrals and word-of-mouth do the trick. The money not spent on marketing goes into doing a better job for our clients and so the cycle continues.
Competence beats brilliance when the product or service is too important to risk on the unknown. I'm not recommending mediocrity, only suggesting the quality of execution is more important than brilliance of ideas. Of course, if you have both a brilliant idea that is useful and that is flawlessly executed, then you can't help but win.
Now, you can see how Ohio issuing "ebay licenses" is quite similar to New York issuing steamboat licenses. While the commerce does take place in their state, it also crosses state lines, and is therefore interstate commerce.
Thanks for the informative posting, but I don't quite see the similarity. In the steamboat case, the New York reg was preventing a New Jersey business from operating. In the Ohio eBay case, the law says nothing about eBay sellers outside of Ohio - a New Jersey eBay seller can sell to Ohio residents without an Ohio eBay license. From my limited understanding of the interstate commerce clause, the law is intended to prevent states from hindering businesses outside of that state. The Ohio law does not impinge on non-Ohioans except that they may see fewer items to buy from Ohio residents.
Something about the Interstate Commerce Clause might get congress, or at least the judcial branch involved. How long until the first lawsuit to stop, or at least clarify, the law?
Interesting idea and the law is certainly too vague, but I don't see how this is an interstate commerce issue. Ohio is regulating (or overregulating) its own state's businesses. Its really no different than a local sales tax on restaurants, business license for retailers, etc. This would only become an interstate issue is Ohio required non-Ohio eBayers to register, pay tax, or put up a bond.
I recently had a problem with ordering from Amazon that illustrates the problem with testing and all the possible permutations of user actions. I was checking out when I noticed that high shipping cost from one vendor, went back to order from a different vendor and hosed the order. Apparently, there was only one of the item in stock and it was now committed to the pending, partially checked-out order. There was no way to clear the partially complete check-out process and no way to checkout with the item in my shopping cart -- it would only complain that I was trying to order TWO of the item and pull the ONE instance of the item from the cart.
Amazon is not the only e-commerce site with this problem (although I expected better from Amazon). Many sites fail to test for user action sequences other than the straight-through order process. I'm not suggesting that developers test for all possible sequences (that's impossible), but they should test for more plausible ones that a simple linear execution of the process.
When I did software testing (a task that I hated), I quickly broke an RDBMS application with just a simple series of adding and removing items from a user-manipulable working set of data objects. Moreover, I even broke the UI layer and dumped myself into a lower level of the RDBMS shell that was supposedly inaccessible to users. The developers grew to hate me so much for finding bugs in their code and the RDBMS vendor's code that I was moved to another job (YAY!).
The point is that it is often too easy to break code because the developers have created overly simple linear use cases that are then used in testing.
This may sound like the lamentations of an old coot, and perhaps it is.
Back in those early days, computers were so much simpler that any decent hobbyist could understand everything. Simple processors, simple instruction sets, simple memory maps, and simple OSes meant it was all comprehensible. When all your code (and data) can fit in 4k, 16k, or even (if you were rich enough), 64k, you could understand it all. Little beasts like a Kim-1or TRS-80 or Commodore PET were amazing little machines. And with full-size components , macroscopic traces, and sub-MHz electronics, anyone with a soldering iron could hack on some new functionality.
Sorry for the nostalgia.
Ann vs. Bob
on
Sim Epidemic
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The real cause for concern is not Ann, the typical adult, but Bob, the traveling salesman. Bob comes into contact with hundreds of people spread across a wide area. Bob can give the infection to client sin remote sites and airline passengers. Worse, Bob will give the disease to hotel and airline workers (who spread it to other "Bob"s that travel).
The connectivity of people lies on a 2-D spectrum of distance and numerousity. Highly connected, highly-travelled people will play a much greater role in spreading the disease than typically-connected, less mobile people. Given the incubation delay and delays in reporting of an epidemic, the Bobs of the world will have done their damage long before the government realizes the danger and closes the airports.
I've not read the bill (only this article), but I wonder if this could be used to prosecute other internet low-life that try to gather personal data for purposes not sanctioned by the submitter of the information. And taking over someone's computer without their knowledge would certainly seem to be a type of fraud under this bill.
Tyranny of the Majority v. Tyranny of the Minority
on
FUD-Based Encyclopedias
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Both 'pedias can suffer from bias and distortions due to the opinions and prevailing cultures of the authors. Wiki follows the whims and fads of the editing/contributing public and Britannica follows the whims of the academic elite. On the one hand, if an idea is "popular" and repeated enough, it becomes truth in a Wiki, regardless of the evidence to the contrary and regardless of the pedigree of that assessment. On the other hand, Britannica's funneling process means that the opinions of gatekeepers trump any dissent.
Neither approach is right or wrong. The Wiki approach provides too much power to mediocrity. The Britannica approach provides too much power to a concentrated elite.
The real solution, possible within an advanced wiki-like system, is a 'pedia that permits these alternative entries and dissenting opinions. Rather than try to create the "One Right Answer" through a battle between contributors, this advanced online system (a MultiWiki?) could provide space for side-by-side comparison of differing entries. Would this system give voice to crackpots? Sure. But it would also provide the means to directly compare differing opinions and allow different groups to marshal their respective bodies of evidence.
Anyone who studies history, economics, and even science will find that there is often no 100% confident consensus. A MultiWiki would provide the infrastructure of recording the parallel, developing threads of knowledge.
Of hives and genetics
on
Exultant
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I'm somewhat skeptical of hives for humans because of the differences between human genetic structures and the genetic structures of true hive makers (Hymenopterans e.g., bees, ants, and wasps).
The hive construct arose in these insects because of a unique genetic quirk called haplodiploidy -- females are diploid (getting 2 copies of each chromosome, one from each parent) and males are haploid (getting a single copy of each chromosome from the mother only). This quirk makes females more related to their sisters than to their own daughters. If a bee, ant or wasp "wants" to be selfish, it foregoes having its own offspring and raises sisters. This creates the basis for a very strong social bond in which individuals maximize their own fitness by belonging to a group. Humans have no such genetic basis -- the bond for sociality is limited to a more transactional trade of social tit-for-tat.
I like Stephen Baxter and will have to read this series to see if/how he addresses this issue.
The old scheme of authenticating people using readily and widely copied information is a recipe for identity theft. If someone stores data on you, that data should be only sufficient for verification and insufficient for the opening of new lines of credit. Some form of encryption/hash should be used that lets someone verify that you are you, but does not let them take that info and reuse/abuse it for their own purposes. Moreover, in an ideal world, each copy of "your information' should be uniquely associated with the collector of that information. That way breaches would be readily traceable back to the leaky database.
ChoicePoint sold data to customers that turned out to be criminals. These criminal customers did not "hack" into the system, they were granted paid access to it. At best/worst the criminals did a bit of social engineering to appear as a legitimate business. Otherwise the feat involved no technological illegitimate access. I think that is the scariest part of the story.
Ok, fine. I'll just gouge my customers up front rather than sticking it to them later by not reimbursing them for patching their systems.
Software shops can then sell protection plans along with the product that guarantees a payout in the event of patching.
Do you wanna pay now or later?
Absolutely true! But if a competing software company actually creates quality code, then it won't have to gouge its customers, won't have many pay-outs for defective/patched software, and won't have to sell a protection plan. The other company that can't or won't produce good, low-defect software will find that it is at a price disadvantage.
The Wallstreet Journal has a page B1 article (free via this link?) on buyers trying to hold software providers liable for flaws, damages, bugs, etc. It seems the old EULA disclaimer is not going to hack it anymore. Buyers argue that each software patch is equivalent to a product recall and that vendors should help pay for the cost of patches (AT&T says it sends $1 million per month on patching).
If General Motors can be held liable for damages caused by a defective car part, some argue that software makers should be held liable for damages arising from buggy code.
Intuition: Just another (blackbox) data point
on
Blink, Take 2
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Maybe the bigger point is that intuition is just another datapoint. As such it can be good or bad, precise or noisy, accurate or biased. To place too much trust in intuitiion is as dangerous as placing too much trust in any given, more "scientific" data point. Yet to ignore intuition is to ignore potentially valuable data..
But the value of intuition-provided data is hard to analyze. On the one hand, intuition does tap into many million years of the evolution of intelligent social animals. The subconscious mind runs some very impressive pattern recognition algorithms that can often recognize what the conscious, analytical mind cannot. On the otherhand, modern global technological civilization is a long way from pre-technical, tribal subsistence. Anyone who studies human decision making and cognition will become quickly aware of its rather severe limitations and curious quirks.
The core problem with intuition is that it seldom yields to analytical introspection. Intuition is a blackbox to the more rigorous processes of vetting and weighing data for more formal decision making processes. Thus, many people, especially people of a quantitive/analytical mindset, don't trust their intuition because they cannot analyze it. For better or worse, that makes the data provided by intuitive feelings suspect even if they are sometime 100% correct.
Grids are great for non-time critical computations tasks. But what happens when everyone needs cycles now! My guess is that systems will evolve to give cycles to the highest bidder/highest priority. In such an environment, low-priority tasks will become effectively impossible on a grid - there will always be some higher-priority/higher-paying task that usurps the cycles.
I wonder how long SETI@home will last if home PC users realize they can "sell" cycles to meet for-pay demand for computational power.
Slashdot Mirror
Just mount an ordinary playing card to hit the wheel's spokes. It makes a nice "motor" sound.
In the Google example shown in TFA, its "easy" to spot a hijack by looking at the URL. But if Google or other search engines were to support IDN (Internationalized Domain Names), then it would be even easier for a criminal to hijack a bank's login page with the IDN browser exploit.
You are forgetting one model: the sponsorship model
Absolutely true, you identified another model. So:
6.Sponsorship model: People and companies donate money to worthy, non-profit content creators (e.g. NPR). Sucks because of leechs.
It's definitely another model that will be in the mix., although our local public TV stations seem to be morphing into ad-supported stations given the number of thinly veiled "sponsored-by" promos.
I don't see what the big deal is. The print version of news papers is an ad supported model. The physical cost of the paper barely supports the printing and distribution. They just need to get local companies to buy ads on the website.
Very good point, the cost structure of newspapers would be much better without all that bulky paper, printing, and distribution. Ad-supported hardcopy works, in part, because newspaper sales people can convince businesses that it works without any inconvenient data to show otherwise.
The best feature of online advertising is that you can measure the response via click-throughs, cookies, and tracking unique visitors. The worst feature of online advertising is that advertisers can measure the response and discover that its not working. Sure, ad-supported can work online, but only as long as ad-blockers don't become too popular or people stop clicking-through and buying from online advertisers.
- Ad-Supported Model: Consumers get the content for free as long as they are willing to watch & click-through enough ads. Sucks because people hate/block/avoid ads (insufficient revenues), although Google might make this work.
- BBC Model: An annual government tax on PCs is used to fund a quasi-independent news gathering organization. Sucks because it adds a tax, will never happen in the U.S. (due to freedom of the press and government non-compete issues), but it could happen in the UK.
- a la Carte Model: Every content creator charges their own subcription. Sucks if you want to read more than one source.
- Flat-Rate Integrator Model: A subscriber pays a monthly subscription for all the news/content aggregated by a given company (AOL, Yahoo, Google?). Sucks because snooty brand-conscious content providers (NYT, WSJ, etc.) will never join an aggregator -- they will prefer to force people to pay separate subscriptions for separate content sources.
- Micopayment Model: A subscriber pays-per-view, the charge showing up on their monthly ISP/cellphone/credit card bill. Sucks because the cost of admin and dealing with disputed charges wipes out most of the revenues. Sucks because people hate being nickled and dimed to death.
I guess we will see which sucky model gets adopted. I suspect they all will with ad-supported and a la carte being more common than the others.This article shows that "short range" RF technologies such as bluetooth or RFID are only short range in the context of a particular transceiver. If someone wants to access an RF device from a greater distance, they need only build a high-gain antenna.
As much as people hated the old Mac Cube, it does illustrate that proper thermal design can provide passive cooling. A specially design PC motherboard, CPU, GPU, and PSU could be built around a heat-convecting chimney -- the more power needed, the taller the chimney. Of course, it would be hard to do this with off-the-shelf modules, but if a design-oriented company wanted a fanless PC, they could do it.
The total bandwidth seems small, only 50 MHz which is less than the 94 MHz of space available for 802.11b. Throw in the need for non-overlapping channels, interference, etc. and this version of wireless broadband will probably offer less bandwidth that original WiFi.
I can only hope that the higher emitted power will let service providers boost SNR (rather than space-out the antennas further) to provide more digital bandwidth within their limited radio bandwidth allotment.
In particular, you don't need a brilliant idea to start a startup around.
I'd like to second this idea and expand on it. Customers, especially business customers, prize consistent performance above uber-brilliance and cutting-edge innovation. They (and I) would rather buy a reliable product/service and give up on a few cutting-edge features (compare Google's plain text to Yahoo's overloaded graphics).
Our company does well because we always deliver what we promise and try to under-promise/over-deliver if possible. The result is that we don't have to spend any money on marketing because referrals and word-of-mouth do the trick. The money not spent on marketing goes into doing a better job for our clients and so the cycle continues.
Competence beats brilliance when the product or service is too important to risk on the unknown. I'm not recommending mediocrity, only suggesting the quality of execution is more important than brilliance of ideas. Of course, if you have both a brilliant idea that is useful and that is flawlessly executed, then you can't help but win.
Now, you can see how Ohio issuing "ebay licenses" is quite similar to New York issuing steamboat licenses. While the commerce does take place in their state, it also crosses state lines, and is therefore interstate commerce.
Thanks for the informative posting, but I don't quite see the similarity. In the steamboat case, the New York reg was preventing a New Jersey business from operating. In the Ohio eBay case, the law says nothing about eBay sellers outside of Ohio - a New Jersey eBay seller can sell to Ohio residents without an Ohio eBay license. From my limited understanding of the interstate commerce clause, the law is intended to prevent states from hindering businesses outside of that state. The Ohio law does not impinge on non-Ohioans except that they may see fewer items to buy from Ohio residents.
Something about the Interstate Commerce Clause might get congress, or at least the judcial branch involved. How long until the first lawsuit to stop, or at least clarify, the law?
Interesting idea and the law is certainly too vague, but I don't see how this is an interstate commerce issue. Ohio is regulating (or overregulating) its own state's businesses. Its really no different than a local sales tax on restaurants, business license for retailers, etc. This would only become an interstate issue is Ohio required non-Ohio eBayers to register, pay tax, or put up a bond.
1. Test for buffer-overflows
2. Test for malformed inputs
3. Profit
I recently had a problem with ordering from Amazon that illustrates the problem with testing and all the possible permutations of user actions. I was checking out when I noticed that high shipping cost from one vendor, went back to order from a different vendor and hosed the order. Apparently, there was only one of the item in stock and it was now committed to the pending, partially checked-out order. There was no way to clear the partially complete check-out process and no way to checkout with the item in my shopping cart -- it would only complain that I was trying to order TWO of the item and pull the ONE instance of the item from the cart.
Amazon is not the only e-commerce site with this problem (although I expected better from Amazon). Many sites fail to test for user action sequences other than the straight-through order process. I'm not suggesting that developers test for all possible sequences (that's impossible), but they should test for more plausible ones that a simple linear execution of the process.
When I did software testing (a task that I hated), I quickly broke an RDBMS application with just a simple series of adding and removing items from a user-manipulable working set of data objects. Moreover, I even broke the UI layer and dumped myself into a lower level of the RDBMS shell that was supposedly inaccessible to users. The developers grew to hate me so much for finding bugs in their code and the RDBMS vendor's code that I was moved to another job (YAY!).
The point is that it is often too easy to break code because the developers have created overly simple linear use cases that are then used in testing.
This technology dates back a ways to an 1878 invention, and devices such as the Webster wire recorder of the 1940s and these models from WWII.
Its amazing how often new tech is really old tech.
This may sound like the lamentations of an old coot, and perhaps it is.
Back in those early days, computers were so much simpler that any decent hobbyist could understand everything. Simple processors, simple instruction sets, simple memory maps, and simple OSes meant it was all comprehensible. When all your code (and data) can fit in 4k, 16k, or even (if you were rich enough), 64k, you could understand it all. Little beasts like a Kim-1or TRS-80 or Commodore PET were amazing little machines. And with full-size components , macroscopic traces, and sub-MHz electronics, anyone with a soldering iron could hack on some new functionality.
Sorry for the nostalgia.
The real cause for concern is not Ann, the typical adult, but Bob, the traveling salesman. Bob comes into contact with hundreds of people spread across a wide area. Bob can give the infection to client sin remote sites and airline passengers. Worse, Bob will give the disease to hotel and airline workers (who spread it to other "Bob"s that travel).
The connectivity of people lies on a 2-D spectrum of distance and numerousity. Highly connected, highly-travelled people will play a much greater role in spreading the disease than typically-connected, less mobile people. Given the incubation delay and delays in reporting of an epidemic, the Bobs of the world will have done their damage long before the government realizes the danger and closes the airports.
I've not read the bill (only this article), but I wonder if this could be used to prosecute other internet low-life that try to gather personal data for purposes not sanctioned by the submitter of the information. And taking over someone's computer without their knowledge would certainly seem to be a type of fraud under this bill.
Both 'pedias can suffer from bias and distortions due to the opinions and prevailing cultures of the authors. Wiki follows the whims and fads of the editing/contributing public and Britannica follows the whims of the academic elite. On the one hand, if an idea is "popular" and repeated enough, it becomes truth in a Wiki, regardless of the evidence to the contrary and regardless of the pedigree of that assessment. On the other hand, Britannica's funneling process means that the opinions of gatekeepers trump any dissent.
Neither approach is right or wrong. The Wiki approach provides too much power to mediocrity. The Britannica approach provides too much power to a concentrated elite.
The real solution, possible within an advanced wiki-like system, is a 'pedia that permits these alternative entries and dissenting opinions. Rather than try to create the "One Right Answer" through a battle between contributors, this advanced online system (a MultiWiki?) could provide space for side-by-side comparison of differing entries. Would this system give voice to crackpots? Sure. But it would also provide the means to directly compare differing opinions and allow different groups to marshal their respective bodies of evidence.
Anyone who studies history, economics, and even science will find that there is often no 100% confident consensus. A MultiWiki would provide the infrastructure of recording the parallel, developing threads of knowledge.
I'm somewhat skeptical of hives for humans because of the differences between human genetic structures and the genetic structures of true hive makers (Hymenopterans e.g., bees, ants, and wasps).
The hive construct arose in these insects because of a unique genetic quirk called haplodiploidy -- females are diploid (getting 2 copies of each chromosome, one from each parent) and males are haploid (getting a single copy of each chromosome from the mother only). This quirk makes females more related to their sisters than to their own daughters. If a bee, ant or wasp "wants" to be selfish, it foregoes having its own offspring and raises sisters. This creates the basis for a very strong social bond in which individuals maximize their own fitness by belonging to a group. Humans have no such genetic basis -- the bond for sociality is limited to a more transactional trade of social tit-for-tat.
I like Stephen Baxter and will have to read this series to see if/how he addresses this issue.
The old scheme of authenticating people using readily and widely copied information is a recipe for identity theft. If someone stores data on you, that data should be only sufficient for verification and insufficient for the opening of new lines of credit. Some form of encryption/hash should be used that lets someone verify that you are you, but does not let them take that info and reuse/abuse it for their own purposes. Moreover, in an ideal world, each copy of "your information' should be uniquely associated with the collector of that information. That way breaches would be readily traceable back to the leaky database.
ChoicePoint sold data to customers that turned out to be criminals. These criminal customers did not "hack" into the system, they were granted paid access to it. At best/worst the criminals did a bit of social engineering to appear as a legitimate business. Otherwise the feat involved no technological illegitimate access. I think that is the scariest part of the story.
Ok, fine. I'll just gouge my customers up front rather than sticking it to them later by not reimbursing them for patching their systems. Software shops can then sell protection plans along with the product that guarantees a payout in the event of patching.
Do you wanna pay now or later?
Absolutely true! But if a competing software company actually creates quality code, then it won't have to gouge its customers, won't have many pay-outs for defective/patched software, and won't have to sell a protection plan. The other company that can't or won't produce good, low-defect software will find that it is at a price disadvantage.
The Wallstreet Journal has a page B1 article (free via this link?) on buyers trying to hold software providers liable for flaws, damages, bugs, etc. It seems the old EULA disclaimer is not going to hack it anymore. Buyers argue that each software patch is equivalent to a product recall and that vendors should help pay for the cost of patches (AT&T says it sends $1 million per month on patching).
If General Motors can be held liable for damages caused by a defective car part, some argue that software makers should be held liable for damages arising from buggy code.
Maybe the bigger point is that intuition is just another datapoint. As such it can be good or bad, precise or noisy, accurate or biased. To place too much trust in intuitiion is as dangerous as placing too much trust in any given, more "scientific" data point. Yet to ignore intuition is to ignore potentially valuable data..
But the value of intuition-provided data is hard to analyze. On the one hand, intuition does tap into many million years of the evolution of intelligent social animals. The subconscious mind runs some very impressive pattern recognition algorithms that can often recognize what the conscious, analytical mind cannot. On the otherhand, modern global technological civilization is a long way from pre-technical, tribal subsistence. Anyone who studies human decision making and cognition will become quickly aware of its rather severe limitations and curious quirks.
The core problem with intuition is that it seldom yields to analytical introspection. Intuition is a blackbox to the more rigorous processes of vetting and weighing data for more formal decision making processes. Thus, many people, especially people of a quantitive/analytical mindset, don't trust their intuition because they cannot analyze it. For better or worse, that makes the data provided by intuitive feelings suspect even if they are sometime 100% correct.
Grids are great for non-time critical computations tasks. But what happens when everyone needs cycles now! My guess is that systems will evolve to give cycles to the highest bidder/highest priority. In such an environment, low-priority tasks will become effectively impossible on a grid - there will always be some higher-priority/higher-paying task that usurps the cycles.
I wonder how long SETI@home will last if home PC users realize they can "sell" cycles to meet for-pay demand for computational power.