>The default state in robots is that they have no concept of saving human life. You virtually never see humans working near robots [hyperwrite.com] in industry, its just too dangerous.
Bullshit.
Not everything is an industrial welding cell.
People use robots all the time, but we don't call them robots. We call them CNC machine tools, which is just semantics. They are as robotic as anything colloquially called a "robot." Turret presses are robots too. Nearly every industrial tool is a robot these days, That's not to say that there aren't interlocks and guards, but we don't give machinery the wide berth that you imply. You just have to keep hands out of the work envelope and this is typically done with light curtains.
In the old days of using single stage manually operated punch presses, before my time, there would be literally leashes on one's wrists that took your hands out the of the work envelope once the switch was pressed. Indeed, I will certainly say that today's robotics are a lot safer than the cam-driven stuff of yester-year. In the old days, light curtains were science fiction, and you couldn't just instantly halt a machine tool like you can today.
But not only that, I saw a program last week about a Frito Lay plant (I believe it was in KC), and the warehouse floor was full of robotic pallet transports mingling among humans (that did surprise me)
If everything needed a "This shall not hurt humans" directive, we wouldn't even have automobiles or even bicycles.
It's time people started fighting back against these things instead of just aquiescing to them.
Of course you're an AC, so you're not going to read this, but I'm saying this simply to go on record that EULAs aren't fucking contracts and shouldn't be treated as if they are.
Wow, I seem to have angered some people. Maybe they depend on the fiction that EULAs are enforceable.
So take some responsibility. Your name and consumer purchasing data didn't "just show up" in some huge database for sale to the highest bidder, in fact at some point YOU checked a box or scrolled through a EULA, and clicked "continue".
But this is largely wrong, and an EULA in a 5 line by 20 column scrollable window that is in reality 20 typed pages long does not constitute consent. It could be argued successfully that EULAs, as such, are at best not binding and are likely contracts of adhesion due to the fact that they are so one-sided. Only in derpified states like Virginia do so-called "click-wrap licenses," by state law, have any real weight, and they are in the minority.
Because if EULAs were really valid, the fantasy "sending spam to this email account is allowed as long as you pay me $100 per advertisement" back in the 90s would have worked (it was an attempt to stretch the junk fax law to computers with scanners and printers attached). But such fantasy "contracts" never did, because the fallacy behind nearly all EULAs is that there is a meeting of the minds or consideration in terms of contract law when there was no such thing. The junk email fantasy "contracts" were unenforceable contracts of adhesion.
An EULA can declare anything, and there is no "give and take" that makes a true contract like contract law has done for centuries. EULAs go against such established contract law in nearly every possible way.
An EULA is worth less than toilet paper, because at least toilet paper is physical and you can wipe your arse with it and EULAs are just bits on a screen.
20 years ago I had a computer built by a company here in RI and it came pre-infected because they were using a drive cloner that cloned an infected drive (and they were reputable, too! - CR Bard got all their machines built by them). I always nuke drives when I get them. Always. It's just good practice.
If you have autorun turned off (as you should) , and you blast dd at the disk and zero it out or write an image to it, whatever was there is gone. "Because dd bears no doubt, cares not if you have prepared your way, and leaves crushed Zagnut nodules in the carpet. " - to paraphrase Blair (he was really talking about kill -9, but I love the quote so).
> Building USB sticks costs almost nothing and there seem to be so many cases where exploits have been propagated this way.
USB sticks have been vectors because people loaded them up with rootkits and threw them in the parking lot or left them at desks/reception areas, etc. It's not the firmware in the disk itself, which is just generic. It's the contents.
I know you're hinting at poisoned firmware, but that means a manufacturer has to poison an entire product line to make sure that some secret embedded firmware (like emedding stuxnet in the hardware instead as a bit of software) gets out to where it needs to go, and at this point, it's company suicide if this gets discovered.
It's unfeasible and involves too many people to be reliable as a way to infect machines to be kept secret.
"Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead" - Franklin. And it still holds today.
It's amazing how the Fark Independents come out and discuss a minor point largely irrelevant to the point at hand.
And by the way, I like to shoot, but I take offense at your name. Obviously not one of us who take shooting seriously, and you wear it on your sleeve as an "Internet Tough Guy."
At the range, I'd be the guy taking the booth on the opposite end from you as I'd be afraid you might not handle your weapon correctly.
In the future, if you don't want to be taken as a complete idiot, you might want to use a different name.
Resolution 1441 was based on absolute lies by the Bush administration, and Colin Powell was *used* as a *stooge* to *lie* to the UN. He has since recanted the WMD stuff and has said things like this:
Colin Powell discusses the WMD 'blot' on his record Share on printShare on email By Eric Black | 05/04/12
In a forthcoming memoir, Colin Powell will describe the speech he gave at the U.N. justifying the U.S. invasion of Iraq on the basis of bogus evidence that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons as "a blot, a failure will always be attached to me."
As far as I can tell by the preview of the book published by Bloomberg, Powell does not suggest that he knew that was he was saying was false.
âoeI am mad mostly at myself for not having smelled the problem," Powell writes about his role. "My instincts failed me."
>Really the tech world would be a lot more pleasant if people didn't conflate rudeness and technical competence.
The thing is that Linus is technically competent. He's in the 1% of technically competent people, so his "benevolent dictator for life" status is not changing any time soon. His ability to herd cats is manifested in his managing the Kernel for as long as he has. I'm sure if you approached Linus when he was 19 and told him that he was going to be managing one of the most important software projects on the planet for more than 20 years, he'd tell you that you were nuts.
But here we are, and Linus is 43, and he's been doing this for quite a long time and Linus *doesn't* have a reputation for being a firebrand. And honestly, to even call Linus rude ignores the fact that when he's rude, it's actually news. Unlike Theo, who is just rude all the time, so it's never news.
>Canada and Denmark have their teritorial waters there, but i don't see them blowing brown people up half the world away or threatening independent states.
It certainly wasn't because of WMDs. Obviously the reason was economic. For who? Well, that's a bit more obscure, but it certainly wasn't about the defense of the US.
You are thinking of a company in a vacuum. A simplistic construct in a gedankenexperiment, that owes nothing to the society and laws that allow it to operate.
You live in a complex society where the police are obliged to protect your personal property and your life, where food is not full of melamine, where we have a military that enforces our economic interests, where roads improve the flow of goods and services.
Slashdot Mirror
>The default state in robots is that they have no concept of saving human life. You virtually never see humans working near robots [hyperwrite.com] in industry, its just too dangerous.
Bullshit.
Not everything is an industrial welding cell.
People use robots all the time, but we don't call them robots. We call them CNC machine tools, which is just semantics. They are as robotic as anything colloquially called a "robot." Turret presses are robots too. Nearly every industrial tool is a robot these days, That's not to say that there aren't interlocks and guards, but we don't give machinery the wide berth that you imply. You just have to keep hands out of the work envelope and this is typically done with light curtains.
In the old days of using single stage manually operated punch presses, before my time, there would be literally leashes on one's wrists that took your hands out the of the work envelope once the switch was pressed. Indeed, I will certainly say that today's robotics are a lot safer than the cam-driven stuff of yester-year. In the old days, light curtains were science fiction, and you couldn't just instantly halt a machine tool like you can today.
But not only that, I saw a program last week about a Frito Lay plant (I believe it was in KC), and the warehouse floor was full of robotic pallet transports mingling among humans (that did surprise me)
If everything needed a "This shall not hurt humans" directive, we wouldn't even have automobiles or even bicycles.
--
BMO
No, it's not an excuse.
It's time people started fighting back against these things instead of just aquiescing to them.
Of course you're an AC, so you're not going to read this, but I'm saying this simply to go on record that EULAs aren't fucking contracts and shouldn't be treated as if they are.
Wow, I seem to have angered some people. Maybe they depend on the fiction that EULAs are enforceable.
--
BMO
It doesn't have to be a toddler..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aTagDSnclk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxddnv0L1uA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL3vo6Weva4
Those are just a few....
--
BMO
But this is largely wrong, and an EULA in a 5 line by 20 column scrollable window that is in reality 20 typed pages long does not constitute consent. It could be argued successfully that EULAs, as such, are at best not binding and are likely contracts of adhesion due to the fact that they are so one-sided. Only in derpified states like Virginia do so-called "click-wrap licenses," by state law, have any real weight, and they are in the minority.
Because if EULAs were really valid, the fantasy "sending spam to this email account is allowed as long as you pay me $100 per advertisement" back in the 90s would have worked (it was an attempt to stretch the junk fax law to computers with scanners and printers attached). But such fantasy "contracts" never did, because the fallacy behind nearly all EULAs is that there is a meeting of the minds or consideration in terms of contract law when there was no such thing. The junk email fantasy "contracts" were unenforceable contracts of adhesion.
An EULA can declare anything, and there is no "give and take" that makes a true contract like contract law has done for centuries. EULAs go against such established contract law in nearly every possible way.
An EULA is worth less than toilet paper, because at least toilet paper is physical and you can wipe your arse with it and EULAs are just bits on a screen.
--
BMO
Color *is* spectrum.
HTH.
--
BMO
20 years ago I had a computer built by a company here in RI and it came pre-infected because they were using a drive cloner that cloned an infected drive (and they were reputable, too! - CR Bard got all their machines built by them). I always nuke drives when I get them. Always. It's just good practice.
If you have autorun turned off (as you should) , and you blast dd at the disk and zero it out or write an image to it, whatever was there is gone. "Because dd bears no doubt, cares not if you have prepared your way, and leaves crushed Zagnut nodules in the carpet. " - to paraphrase Blair (he was really talking about kill -9, but I love the quote so).
It's not magic.
--
BMO
> Building USB sticks costs almost nothing and there seem to be so many cases where exploits have been propagated this way.
USB sticks have been vectors because people loaded them up with rootkits and threw them in the parking lot or left them at desks/reception areas, etc. It's not the firmware in the disk itself, which is just generic. It's the contents.
I know you're hinting at poisoned firmware, but that means a manufacturer has to poison an entire product line to make sure that some secret embedded firmware (like emedding stuxnet in the hardware instead as a bit of software) gets out to where it needs to go, and at this point, it's company suicide if this gets discovered.
It's unfeasible and involves too many people to be reliable as a way to infect machines to be kept secret.
"Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead" - Franklin. And it still holds today.
--
BMO
You *make* one, using known good disk images from an uninfected computer.
dd if=~/disk.images/knoppix.iso (or whatever you want) of=/dev/sdc1 (or wherever your usb thumbdrive is)
[return]
No, I don't use unetbootin. It seems that simply using dd to fling an iso at a thumbdrive is sufficient.
Done.
--
BMO
It was a joke...
You were supposed to laugh.
*bmo pouts*
--
BMO
I believe those fall back to Silverlight mode.
Try Gnash.
--
BMO
It's amazing how the Fark Independents come out and discuss a minor point largely irrelevant to the point at hand.
And by the way, I like to shoot, but I take offense at your name. Obviously not one of us who take shooting seriously, and you wear it on your sleeve as an "Internet Tough Guy."
At the range, I'd be the guy taking the booth on the opposite end from you as I'd be afraid you might not handle your weapon correctly.
In the future, if you don't want to be taken as a complete idiot, you might want to use a different name.
Bye.
--
BMO
Like what I said.
Some idiot with a gun.
--
BMO
Resolution 1441 was based on absolute lies by the Bush administration, and Colin Powell was *used* as a *stooge* to *lie* to the UN. He has since recanted the WMD stuff and has said things like this:
http://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2012/05/colin-powell-discusses-wmd-blot-his-record
You're an AC because you are repeating the same lies of the Bush idiots.
You're disgusting.
--
BMO
Oh wow...
"Annually"
Surely Linus needs to be locked up, as he is ucontrollable.
--
BMO
>Really the tech world would be a lot more pleasant if people didn't conflate rudeness and technical competence.
The thing is that Linus is technically competent. He's in the 1% of technically competent people, so his "benevolent dictator for life" status is not changing any time soon. His ability to herd cats is manifested in his managing the Kernel for as long as he has. I'm sure if you approached Linus when he was 19 and told him that he was going to be managing one of the most important software projects on the planet for more than 20 years, he'd tell you that you were nuts.
But here we are, and Linus is 43, and he's been doing this for quite a long time and Linus *doesn't* have a reputation for being a firebrand. And honestly, to even call Linus rude ignores the fact that when he's rude, it's actually news. Unlike Theo, who is just rude all the time, so it's never news.
--
BMO
>The purpose of our military is not supposed to be to protect our economic interests...
But that's the point of most militaries.
--
BMO
>Canada and Denmark have their teritorial waters there, but i don't see them blowing brown people up half the world away or threatening independent states.
If they were bigger, they would be.
This is what you don't understand.
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BMO
>I will not repeat this again.
Stuff a sock in it.
--
BMO
You know, I only mentioned that the US's dependence on military superiority for economic stability, but it's hardly the US that does it.
Everyone does.
Why the hell do you think the Danes and Canadians send ships and planes to the arctic to argue about what island is Danish and what is Canadian?
"Global bullying" is done by everyone.
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BMO
What about the invasion of Iraq?
It certainly wasn't because of WMDs. Obviously the reason was economic. For who? Well, that's a bit more obscure, but it certainly wasn't about the defense of the US.
--
BMO
You are thinking of a company in a vacuum. A simplistic construct in a gedankenexperiment, that owes nothing to the society and laws that allow it to operate.
In short, your argument stinks.
--
BMO
>no more retirees getting 300k/y off the rest of us.
You're a moron, through and through.
Burning karma because you are an example of the dumbshits that call themselves Randians.
--
BMO
>Companies, however, don't benefit from army
Bullshit.
It's like the Banana Wars never existed, eh?
--
BMO
>did you just advocate colonialism 2.0?
We've already had it ever since the end of WWII.
What the fuck do you think the military is /for/?
--
BMO
You live in a complex society where the police are obliged to protect your personal property and your life, where food is not full of melamine, where we have a military that enforces our economic interests, where roads improve the flow of goods and services.
Pay for it.
--
BMO