There's a difference between the knowledge about or science of politics and the current political realities. Knowing about politics and especially history is the only hope survivors would have of repeating all our (and our ancestors) mistakes.
You are right that body of knowledge will really only be useful after things start normalizing a bit, after a social structure emerges.
I think the primary mistake of pretty much all apocalypse scenarios is always the "total anarchy" part. As much as some dreamers wish it, humans simply aren't that way. We are social animals and the chances that group dynamics survive and families, tribes or other units of people, especially if they already know each other and learnt to trust each other (sports teams, military teams, etc.) fighting for survival is much, much higher than an "everyone for himself" scenario.
I wonder what "embalming" does in a survivor handbook, but maybe that's just me being a semantics nazi.
The idea is cute. The format is wrong. This absolutely must be a printed book or it will not serve its purpose. Because if any scenario that requires it happens, then two things will follow within a reasonably short frame of time: a) power will fail, both mains and whatever battery or generators you have and b) it is highly unlikely that you'll have an opportunity to print it all before that happens.
It also needs to be edited, which is why "you can print it out yourself" is not a proper answer to my remark above. When I'm fighting for survival, I won't have time to search through a huge volume of information to figure out what I need right now. Some things I'll know to look for, of course, but much information will be of the "you only know it's important if you already know about it" kind.
Also, it completely lacks sections on psychology, sociology and politics. While as sciences, these are fairly young and just beginning to deliver applicable results, there is a lot in there that can help small groups under pressure to perform better and manage their social dynamics as well as mental health.
Finally, it lacks a section of advanced technology. Yes, if civilization crashes, we'll be back to horses and plowing the fields for one or two generations, but why should we have to re-invent everything about computers, networks, planes, rockets, medicine and so on? Some of this stuff took decades and lives lost to figure out.
Because everyone writes absolutely perfect code, no one ever loses anything, and there are no exploits out there.
No, because there is a difference between looking for the perfect castle and realizing that maybe having a wall isn't so stupid and closing the door and night isn't a bad idea, either.
Making brute force attacks difficult is not a question of perfect code. It's a question of not allowing unlimited tries at unlimited speed (online) or not storing unsalted password hashes (offline). It's not a matter of protecting your server from compromise. A serious defense strategy always includes the assumption that several layers of your protection fail and you should still not suffer a total defeat.
you'd better hope they're salted with a strong salt, per-user, and hashed with a function like bcrypt or PBKDF2.
You see, this is the point. Whether or not they are is not a matter of hope like rain and sunshine. It's something you actively control.
There aren't any magical solutions.
No, but there are good and stupid solutions, and it's time we stop using the stupid ones. It's a feature of this anarchy we love so much, because if software was a car... well, at least in the western world you can't legally sell a car without brakes anymore.
or lock out the console/IP entirely, after N failed attempts.
Which opens the door to DOS attacks on target accounts, but there are several smart ways to work around that (send an unlock link to the e-mail address for that user, for example).
I hope security "analysts" catch on to reality soon.
There are two kinds of security people in the business world. Those with a real interest in advancing the field and making computing more secure, and those working for large consulting and IT "Security" companies. I am exaggerating some, of course, and there are great people in those companies as well, but unfortunately the business concept of too many of them is based on solving problems in such ways that you can sell the solution to many other customers, not on finding a solution that takes care of the actual problem.
It's the same with consulting companies and the insource/outsourcing cycles. There are good arguments for both of them, but if you've watched the business world for a decade or two you understand that they are hyped in cycles so the same consultants who sold outsourcing to a company last period can sell insourcing to the same company next period or after the next CTO change.
Basically, our password handling systems and policies are completely broken. It's not just what xkcd pointed out - it's worse. Those policies are based on making brute-force attacks more difficult. But to sum up a complex topic in a soundbite: If your system allows for brute-force attacks, your system is fatally broken.
But the fact that you used that slur will be used against you by your competition in the campaign. Duh.
I'm not afraid of that. Media and opponents will find something to use against you anyways, and if they don't, they will make it up.
And your apparent deviant character as demonstrated by your racist bigotry online will be used to help convict you.
I pity you for the country you live in. Or maybe I'm just idealistic and believe that whether or not I committed the crime I'm accused of will be used to judge me.
Since you're on the level of ad-hominem attacks now, with no discernable actual content, I'll leave it at that.
You're not a luminary shining light on the true inner workings of human minds,
I'm not? Now you confuse me.:-)
Maybe I'm influenced by being a European, so I don't have this history of living-memory slavery of black people and so the word is not such a trigger. But that's not the point. I didn't intend or claim to read peoples minds, but let's be honest here: If the Ebola outbreak were in Italy, the worlds reaction would be quite different. There is a definite element of racism involved in how we treat the matter, including the often made "let's just stop all travel" argument.
I don't care enough to try and dox you, but thanks for giving public permission to anybody who might. If what you say is true and you ever decide to run for public office, you're accused of a serious crime, you go through family court litigation, or you face any other circumstance whereby others have incentive to put your character under scrutiny, then God help you.
You're a bit strange. If you run for office, your private address will be public record almost immediately. Your family can be assumed to know where you live. If you're accused of a serious crime, you're going to be in jail, so it doesn't matter. So whatever point you were trying to make, I'm afraid your rage blurred your rationality.
It's a really cute idea, but from what I've seen so far is lacking a few fundamentals.
Firstly, there's little mention of user interface design, which if you want this to be used by average Joes and Janes is about the most important thing.
Secondly, sharing your stuff on your own server is cute, in fact we've only had it for about 30 years, even before the Internet with BBS etc. - the problem is connections, networks. Facebook solved that problem and that's why it works and people use it. If everyone has mynamewithsomerandomadditionbecauseitwasalreadytaken.eggcyte.com - how do you find them? You will need a social network layer on top, at which point you're basically back to Facebook, minus distributed data storage.
Thirdly, the idea of having it mobile and being able to plug it in anywhere is cute, but it also means that the device - and thus everything I want published - is unavailable while in transit. In practice, the mobility will be a non-issue because of this.
The United States will resist all efforts to give "any person, entity or nation"
other than the US, that is. Because we think our laws are applicable world-wide, our jurisdiction covers Earth and we invented the damn thing (ignore that this is only partially true) so get on your knees and thank us.
Would you choose different words were this an on-the-air interview instead of an anonymous Internet post?
No, I wouldn't. I post with my real name here as well, and finding my physical address is a matter of following some links and knowing how whois works, or for my business address, not even that.
You speak as you choose, damn the consequences.
Sometimes I choose the words that others only have in their minds, in order to expose their thinking to themselves. Also, sometimes a bit of provocation is helpful. See the first troll reply, who clearly stopped reading after "niggers".
To get to the point that a nurse is infected means that protocol wasn't followed. That it wasn't EVERY nurse and EVERY doctor that touched the patient is quite telling.
We know some details about the nurse that was infected in spain: She touched her face with her hands before disinfecting them.
Yes, protocol wasn't followed. But here's the point: You need to follow protocol 100% of the time to be safe. You only need to make one mistake to be infected. For a virus with such a crazy lethality rate, that's not good. Treating an ebola patient is a lot like playing russian roulette.
Just don't lick it, and you're fine.
Very few of the people who are now dead licked it. Yes, the media loves fear stories and it's overblown, but you're underblowing it.
Who thought that bringing Ebola patients into countries not yet infected was a smart idea? Apparently, the thought of an american dying in Africa like all those niggers was too much for someone to stand, yes? Newsflash: The virus isn't racist, it doesn't give a fuck if you're a rich american or a starving african.
We have the same in Europe. At least one health care worker here has been infected and will probably die because someone thought it's smart to bring people infected with a 90% lethality virus home for treatment. Good job.
We cannot contain these viruses, and our assumption that we in the west are better than those primitives in Africa and we will certain contain it to the hospital wards has been smashed. Like basically anyone who's not an idiot could have guessed.
(and for the mentally challenged readers: Of course my use of "niggers" and "primitives" is to outline the very hubris I criticise. If you think I'm a racist, you're projecting too much of yourself into my words...)
The moment I get spam about Kickstarter projects, I'll delete my account there. Who else?
Kickstarter is a cool concept, but one of the things that made it cool is that at its core, it has this idea of presenting your idea and letting people come to you. The more you reverse it, by "reaching out" (marketing speak) aka spamming (real human speak) people with your project, the more it is simply and advertisement platform. And nobody gives a flying fuck about advertisement platforms, as we can see from the absence of the Internet equivalent of the shopping channel.
I'm from Germany. Ever since it was leaked that the NSA was spying so extensively on our government that by international standards it could reasonably be considered an act of war, I wonder what it'll take for our USA-lapdog chancellor to grow a spine and do more than giving Obama a stern talk.
(Left un-explored is whether polygraph testing is an effective way to catch lies.)
And here I was watching from Europe thinking that this question had been settled years ago. Nobody else in the world is taking the polygraph seriously, it's a leftover from the time shortly after WW2 when too optimistic pseudo-scientists (mostly, some scientists as well) thought very soon now technology will solve every problem of the human race.
We're not talking radio-controlled. These drones use networking technology, and if their IP address is pingable from your location is not exactly the major point.
Given that many drone victims are civilians, in a conflict that is not officially a war, the only difference left seems to be that the murderers are not civilians. That's one of the flimsiest excuses ever to call something by a different name.
It's not yet successful (hearing in 2015), and anyone can bring a lawsuit for any stupid reason. But if they succeed, I'll lose what's left of my faith in humanity.
If they put it in writing, you can probably sue them on it. If I were operating in the USA, known for having more lawyers than mosquitos, I would avoid absolutely anything that has the slightest chance of landing me in court.
IOW, if I planned to make a promise to my customers, but without giving a free "sue me" card to some asshole who wants to lawyer-abuse me because one i wasn't dotted or one t wasn't crossed, then a public CEO announcement would be exactly what I'd do, especially if my CEO had such a good reputation. To any reasonable person, he's honour-bound to stand true to his word, but the ambulance-chaser, he can tell to fuck off and die.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a difference between the knowledge about or science of politics and the current political realities. Knowing about politics and especially history is the only hope survivors would have of repeating all our (and our ancestors) mistakes.
You are right that body of knowledge will really only be useful after things start normalizing a bit, after a social structure emerges.
I think the primary mistake of pretty much all apocalypse scenarios is always the "total anarchy" part. As much as some dreamers wish it, humans simply aren't that way. We are social animals and the chances that group dynamics survive and families, tribes or other units of people, especially if they already know each other and learnt to trust each other (sports teams, military teams, etc.) fighting for survival is much, much higher than an "everyone for himself" scenario.
I wonder what "embalming" does in a survivor handbook, but maybe that's just me being a semantics nazi.
The idea is cute. The format is wrong. This absolutely must be a printed book or it will not serve its purpose. Because if any scenario that requires it happens, then two things will follow within a reasonably short frame of time: a) power will fail, both mains and whatever battery or generators you have and b) it is highly unlikely that you'll have an opportunity to print it all before that happens.
It also needs to be edited, which is why "you can print it out yourself" is not a proper answer to my remark above. When I'm fighting for survival, I won't have time to search through a huge volume of information to figure out what I need right now. Some things I'll know to look for, of course, but much information will be of the "you only know it's important if you already know about it" kind.
Also, it completely lacks sections on psychology, sociology and politics. While as sciences, these are fairly young and just beginning to deliver applicable results, there is a lot in there that can help small groups under pressure to perform better and manage their social dynamics as well as mental health.
Finally, it lacks a section of advanced technology. Yes, if civilization crashes, we'll be back to horses and plowing the fields for one or two generations, but why should we have to re-invent everything about computers, networks, planes, rockets, medicine and so on? Some of this stuff took decades and lives lost to figure out.
Because everyone writes absolutely perfect code, no one ever loses anything, and there are no exploits out there.
No, because there is a difference between looking for the perfect castle and realizing that maybe having a wall isn't so stupid and closing the door and night isn't a bad idea, either.
Making brute force attacks difficult is not a question of perfect code. It's a question of not allowing unlimited tries at unlimited speed (online) or not storing unsalted password hashes (offline). It's not a matter of protecting your server from compromise. A serious defense strategy always includes the assumption that several layers of your protection fail and you should still not suffer a total defeat.
you'd better hope they're salted with a strong salt, per-user, and hashed with a function like bcrypt or PBKDF2.
You see, this is the point. Whether or not they are is not a matter of hope like rain and sunshine. It's something you actively control.
There aren't any magical solutions.
No, but there are good and stupid solutions, and it's time we stop using the stupid ones. It's a feature of this anarchy we love so much, because if software was a car... well, at least in the western world you can't legally sell a car without brakes anymore.
or lock out the console/IP entirely, after N failed attempts.
Which opens the door to DOS attacks on target accounts, but there are several smart ways to work around that (send an unlock link to the e-mail address for that user, for example).
I hope security "analysts" catch on to reality soon.
There are two kinds of security people in the business world. Those with a real interest in advancing the field and making computing more secure, and those working for large consulting and IT "Security" companies. I am exaggerating some, of course, and there are great people in those companies as well, but unfortunately the business concept of too many of them is based on solving problems in such ways that you can sell the solution to many other customers, not on finding a solution that takes care of the actual problem.
It's the same with consulting companies and the insource/outsourcing cycles. There are good arguments for both of them, but if you've watched the business world for a decade or two you understand that they are hyped in cycles so the same consultants who sold outsourcing to a company last period can sell insourcing to the same company next period or after the next CTO change.
Me and other security experts have been saying such things for years.
Basically, our password handling systems and policies are completely broken. It's not just what xkcd pointed out - it's worse. Those policies are based on making brute-force attacks more difficult. But to sum up a complex topic in a soundbite: If your system allows for brute-force attacks, your system is fatally broken.
But the fact that you used that slur will be used against you by your competition in the campaign. Duh.
I'm not afraid of that. Media and opponents will find something to use against you anyways, and if they don't, they will make it up.
And your apparent deviant character as demonstrated by your racist bigotry online will be used to help convict you.
I pity you for the country you live in. Or maybe I'm just idealistic and believe that whether or not I committed the crime I'm accused of will be used to judge me.
Since you're on the level of ad-hominem attacks now, with no discernable actual content, I'll leave it at that.
You're not a luminary shining light on the true inner workings of human minds,
I'm not? Now you confuse me. :-)
Maybe I'm influenced by being a European, so I don't have this history of living-memory slavery of black people and so the word is not such a trigger. But that's not the point. I didn't intend or claim to read peoples minds, but let's be honest here: If the Ebola outbreak were in Italy, the worlds reaction would be quite different. There is a definite element of racism involved in how we treat the matter, including the often made "let's just stop all travel" argument.
I don't care enough to try and dox you, but thanks for giving public permission to anybody who might. If what you say is true and you ever decide to run for public office, you're accused of a serious crime, you go through family court litigation, or you face any other circumstance whereby others have incentive to put your character under scrutiny, then God help you.
You're a bit strange. If you run for office, your private address will be public record almost immediately. Your family can be assumed to know where you live. If you're accused of a serious crime, you're going to be in jail, so it doesn't matter. So whatever point you were trying to make, I'm afraid your rage blurred your rationality.
It's a really cute idea, but from what I've seen so far is lacking a few fundamentals.
Firstly, there's little mention of user interface design, which if you want this to be used by average Joes and Janes is about the most important thing.
Secondly, sharing your stuff on your own server is cute, in fact we've only had it for about 30 years, even before the Internet with BBS etc. - the problem is connections, networks. Facebook solved that problem and that's why it works and people use it. If everyone has mynamewithsomerandomadditionbecauseitwasalreadytaken.eggcyte.com - how do you find them? You will need a social network layer on top, at which point you're basically back to Facebook, minus distributed data storage.
Thirdly, the idea of having it mobile and being able to plug it in anywhere is cute, but it also means that the device - and thus everything I want published - is unavailable while in transit. In practice, the mobility will be a non-issue because of this.
The United States will resist all efforts to give "any person, entity or nation"
other than the US, that is. Because we think our laws are applicable world-wide, our jurisdiction covers Earth and we invented the damn thing (ignore that this is only partially true) so get on your knees and thank us.
drinking the water used to wash the dead
I didn't read about it before, but a quick Google search seems to confirm it. Thanks for the information!
Would you choose different words were this an on-the-air interview instead of an anonymous Internet post?
No, I wouldn't. I post with my real name here as well, and finding my physical address is a matter of following some links and knowing how whois works, or for my business address, not even that.
You speak as you choose, damn the consequences.
Sometimes I choose the words that others only have in their minds, in order to expose their thinking to themselves. Also, sometimes a bit of provocation is helpful. See the first troll reply, who clearly stopped reading after "niggers".
That is actually correct and the only reasonable explanation I could find so far. Parent deserves being modded up.
Wow, you either forgot to post as AC, or are from somewhere so racist that your racism seems casual enough to drop the N bomb into regular speech.
You didn't read until the end of my statement before your rage exploded out of you.
Uh, the whole Internet is a shopping channel.
It's not. It's a shopping arcade or something. If you don't see the difference, I can't help you.
To get to the point that a nurse is infected means that protocol wasn't followed. That it wasn't EVERY nurse and EVERY doctor that touched the patient is quite telling.
We know some details about the nurse that was infected in spain: She touched her face with her hands before disinfecting them.
Yes, protocol wasn't followed. But here's the point: You need to follow protocol 100% of the time to be safe. You only need to make one mistake to be infected. For a virus with such a crazy lethality rate, that's not good. Treating an ebola patient is a lot like playing russian roulette.
Just don't lick it, and you're fine.
Very few of the people who are now dead licked it. Yes, the media loves fear stories and it's overblown, but you're underblowing it.
Who thought that bringing Ebola patients into countries not yet infected was a smart idea? Apparently, the thought of an american dying in Africa like all those niggers was too much for someone to stand, yes? Newsflash: The virus isn't racist, it doesn't give a fuck if you're a rich american or a starving african.
We have the same in Europe. At least one health care worker here has been infected and will probably die because someone thought it's smart to bring people infected with a 90% lethality virus home for treatment. Good job.
We cannot contain these viruses, and our assumption that we in the west are better than those primitives in Africa and we will certain contain it to the hospital wards has been smashed. Like basically anyone who's not an idiot could have guessed.
(and for the mentally challenged readers: Of course my use of "niggers" and "primitives" is to outline the very hubris I criticise. If you think I'm a racist, you're projecting too much of yourself into my words...)
The moment I get spam about Kickstarter projects, I'll delete my account there. Who else?
Kickstarter is a cool concept, but one of the things that made it cool is that at its core, it has this idea of presenting your idea and letting people come to you. The more you reverse it, by "reaching out" (marketing speak) aka spamming (real human speak) people with your project, the more it is simply and advertisement platform. And nobody gives a flying fuck about advertisement platforms, as we can see from the absence of the Internet equivalent of the shopping channel.
I'm from Germany. Ever since it was leaked that the NSA was spying so extensively on our government that by international standards it could reasonably be considered an act of war, I wonder what it'll take for our USA-lapdog chancellor to grow a spine and do more than giving Obama a stern talk.
(Left un-explored is whether polygraph testing is an effective way to catch lies.)
And here I was watching from Europe thinking that this question had been settled years ago. Nobody else in the world is taking the polygraph seriously, it's a leftover from the time shortly after WW2 when too optimistic pseudo-scientists (mostly, some scientists as well) thought very soon now technology will solve every problem of the human race.
We're not talking radio-controlled. These drones use networking technology, and if their IP address is pingable from your location is not exactly the major point.
Given that many drone victims are civilians, in a conflict that is not officially a war, the only difference left seems to be that the murderers are not civilians. That's one of the flimsiest excuses ever to call something by a different name.
It's not yet successful (hearing in 2015), and anyone can bring a lawsuit for any stupid reason. But if they succeed, I'll lose what's left of my faith in humanity.
Mod parent up. The first "online murder" happened the day they put weapons on a drone. TFA is just the usual news-that-try-to-scare-you bullshit.
Let me know when you've succeeded to sue a company in court for some marketing statements they made to the press.
I'm not surprised at all.
If they put it in writing, you can probably sue them on it. If I were operating in the USA, known for having more lawyers than mosquitos, I would avoid absolutely anything that has the slightest chance of landing me in court.
IOW, if I planned to make a promise to my customers, but without giving a free "sue me" card to some asshole who wants to lawyer-abuse me because one i wasn't dotted or one t wasn't crossed, then a public CEO announcement would be exactly what I'd do, especially if my CEO had such a good reputation. To any reasonable person, he's honour-bound to stand true to his word, but the ambulance-chaser, he can tell to fuck off and die.