Your browser being unique means that, in theory, your behavior on various sites could be correlated, even if you have proxies hiding your IP. On the other hand, identifying who those fingerprints belong to might be a bit hard to do, except perhaps for various three letter agencies.
The moral is clearly that if one wants to do Secret Stuff online, one should use both many proxies (paid for with prepaid cards as mentioned above), and a browser/OS that is not your normal one. Don't post torrents on the same machine that you do your banking, basically.
Or, have a piece of paper with some random scrawlings in smudged paper taped to back of your desk, but then really use a password like "The1542PurpleOrcsAttackAtDawnAndBringCookies" that you really do remember. (Well, probably something stronger.) Not only are the characters on the paper wrong, but they're believably smudged/aged, and carefully crafted so that it's not clear what some of them are. When asked, tell them that you never tested it.
The sticky part is, you might very well get contempt charges ANYWAYS if you tell them "well, it's on this little paper on the back of my desk; I haven't had to use it in years but it should be there." Then, you're sitting in prison for contempt, and if you tell them "No, really, the password is ____", you've probably committed perjury. The more I look at this, the better it seems to just type in the password, unless you really have been up to no good.
I believe the judge ruled here that giving a password is NOT intrinsically self-incriminating testimony.
Any serious bad guy would be like, "yay, I get contempt charges!" but innocent plebes like us would likely be screwed by trying to take a moral stand on this. If the judge rules that you have to type it in, you fight it as far as you can, and then failing that you type it in and then appeal later.
For someone like me to take a university class of similar caliber, not only would I (normally) have to pay tuition, I'd need to meed prerequisites and so on. I could easily see people paying $10-$50 for a web seminar series.
Hell, do it on a pay-as-you-like basis as a trial, similar to what the Humble Bundle does, and I'd bet that while many people would freeload, others would donate/pay a hundred dollars. I'd think twice at $50, but likely would just spend $20 in a heartbeat if I were taking something like that. Being able to sell textbooks, handy cheat-sheets which collate formulas, or other useful materials would be another way to do it.
Only in that it makes you a target, and if your spam/phishing/malware filter doesn't detect it, you're relying on users to fall for them -- and they demonstrated with their test that a large number of the users were gullible.
While it's certainly amusing, it's also something that I think is a valuable resource for all developers to read. Seeing WTF-worthy code (or design decisions) helps you recognize it when you encounter it in the wild (design reviews, code reviews, HR policies,etc), and call bullshit when necessary. Many of the WTFs are about SQL, which is far outside my area of expertise or responsibility, but I feel like the code-related ones have helped me be a better programmer by being a constant reminder to read things carefully, sanitize inputs, and ensure that it makes sense to someone not up to their ears in this section of code.
I suspect that a motivated person who is not afraid to die or get wounded (which most people on a plane might fit, at some point) would be more of a threat to a terrorist than we would be on the street without the threat of being in a flying bomb. Clearly not as effective as a trained fighter, but then one could also bludgeon them with some luggage, right?:)
If someone hacked the router to do it, I'm pretty sure that will be prosecutable as a computer crime, as it's unauthorized access of a computer system. Very bad for those involved. If instead someone just put up a hidden wireless router with the message, that's free speech.
Random crazies who want to cause damage will always find a way to do so -- whether it's with a gun (obtained legally or not), a car, or a bomb. Anyone sufficiently motivated to try to assassinate someone else (or even just go on a rampage) will not be deterred by not having a gun. They'll either make a gun, make a spear, make a shiv, rent a truck, and so on. Where having a weapon helps is (in theory) not being prey.
However, in doing so, they also have to assume that that person's friends or neighbors are not armed. I'm pretty certain that an armed citizen witnessing a robbery across the street is even more of a threat to the criminal.
Risking damage to an engine when you shoot [at] a hijacker is better than letting the plane get turned into a giant cruise missile with the target of their choosing.
That said, I agree. I'd rather simply have the right to carry a knife on the plane. When five out of six guys, and several of the women, are carrying weapons, hostage situations are unlikely to happen, or last long. (Also, locking doors are awesome and effective.)
I don't think it's much of a stretch to imagine Anonymous people spamming the system with false accusations, whether for laughs or out of a sense of protest.
Aye, and the instant we open up, so will China and Russia. I don't think that's really a winning scenario, unless you're already in your orbital babe-station repopulating the human race.
The fact that we now have the technology to even need to make such a distinction is what makes it tech-related, and not merely political. Of course it's political, but discussion of the ethical merits is certainly nerd-worthy also.
Look at it this way. If we had the technology to read minds perfectly, would we execute terrorists on the spot? What level of intent or animosity to a regime's policy or actions would be ethically sufficient to do that? It all hinges on if we had the technology, though. Sixty years ago, we did not have the capability that we now do for monitoring persons of interest in real-time, 24/7, the way we currently can. Now, we can get video feeds of insurgents putting bombs on roads, or track individuals when they leave a meeting with someone and kill them when they are alone, from halfway around the world. That's the sort of surveillance that was literally science fiction eighty years ago (1984), combined with a remote strike capability that also was first discussed in fiction. The transition from science fiction to current capabilities is amazing, and a little scary.
Indoor cats have no problem staying out of your neighbor's yard, and often are much safer than outdoor pets (depending on the presence/lethality of local predators, or the volume of traffic near your home).
With the right questions, and a victim who is actually guilty, you might get verifiable truths. However, that already depends on the person actually being "guilty" or having knowledge. In the case where your victim is the Wrong Guy, you could easily get them to confess to stuff (especially if the interrogation is contaminated with stuff that the interrogators know but tell the victim) that they didn't do.
Also, consider torturing the Wrong Guy. (We'll pretend that the interrogator doesn't know he's the Wrong Guy.) At some point, you ask him for a verifiable truth about Something, and he doesn't give it. He claims not to know, to be the wrong guy. When torturing, you threaten him with (or enact) bodily harm. You still won't know whether he's lying about "not knowing", and you'll have harmed the Wrong Guy. The fact that in the (potentially rare) case where you have the Right Guy you can sometimes get good info (but often might not) does not excuse using torture. Not even when you're Jack Bauer trying to save the world.
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Your browser being unique means that, in theory, your behavior on various sites could be correlated, even if you have proxies hiding your IP. On the other hand, identifying who those fingerprints belong to might be a bit hard to do, except perhaps for various three letter agencies.
The moral is clearly that if one wants to do Secret Stuff online, one should use both many proxies (paid for with prepaid cards as mentioned above), and a browser/OS that is not your normal one. Don't post torrents on the same machine that you do your banking, basically.
Sadly, nobody ever expects the Inquisition until its too late.
Someone will load in some cookie batter and have a dickerdoodle machine.
That article is RATHER informative, too. Thanks!
Or, have a piece of paper with some random scrawlings in smudged paper taped to back of your desk, but then really use a password like "The1542PurpleOrcsAttackAtDawnAndBringCookies" that you really do remember. (Well, probably something stronger.) Not only are the characters on the paper wrong, but they're believably smudged/aged, and carefully crafted so that it's not clear what some of them are. When asked, tell them that you never tested it.
The sticky part is, you might very well get contempt charges ANYWAYS if you tell them "well, it's on this little paper on the back of my desk; I haven't had to use it in years but it should be there." Then, you're sitting in prison for contempt, and if you tell them "No, really, the password is ____", you've probably committed perjury. The more I look at this, the better it seems to just type in the password, unless you really have been up to no good.
I believe the judge ruled here that giving a password is NOT intrinsically self-incriminating testimony.
Any serious bad guy would be like, "yay, I get contempt charges!" but innocent plebes like us would likely be screwed by trying to take a moral stand on this. If the judge rules that you have to type it in, you fight it as far as you can, and then failing that you type it in and then appeal later.
They'd probably try to nail you for destroying evidence. :(
If so, then I hope you have an example of said Monte Carlo sequence and examples of having used it.
Even without certification, it's still awesome.
For someone like me to take a university class of similar caliber, not only would I (normally) have to pay tuition, I'd need to meed prerequisites and so on. I could easily see people paying $10-$50 for a web seminar series.
Hell, do it on a pay-as-you-like basis as a trial, similar to what the Humble Bundle does, and I'd bet that while many people would freeload, others would donate/pay a hundred dollars. I'd think twice at $50, but likely would just spend $20 in a heartbeat if I were taking something like that. Being able to sell textbooks, handy cheat-sheets which collate formulas, or other useful materials would be another way to do it.
Only in that it makes you a target, and if your spam/phishing/malware filter doesn't detect it, you're relying on users to fall for them -- and they demonstrated with their test that a large number of the users were gullible.
While it's certainly amusing, it's also something that I think is a valuable resource for all developers to read. Seeing WTF-worthy code (or design decisions) helps you recognize it when you encounter it in the wild (design reviews, code reviews, HR policies,etc), and call bullshit when necessary. Many of the WTFs are about SQL, which is far outside my area of expertise or responsibility, but I feel like the code-related ones have helped me be a better programmer by being a constant reminder to read things carefully, sanitize inputs, and ensure that it makes sense to someone not up to their ears in this section of code.
I suspect that a motivated person who is not afraid to die or get wounded (which most people on a plane might fit, at some point) would be more of a threat to a terrorist than we would be on the street without the threat of being in a flying bomb. Clearly not as effective as a trained fighter, but then one could also bludgeon them with some luggage, right? :)
If someone hacked the router to do it, I'm pretty sure that will be prosecutable as a computer crime, as it's unauthorized access of a computer system. Very bad for those involved. If instead someone just put up a hidden wireless router with the message, that's free speech.
Until you mentioned it, I didn't know it existed. I think I found the link:
http://www.ted.com/talks/cheryl_hayashi_the_magnificence_of_spider_silk.html
Random crazies who want to cause damage will always find a way to do so -- whether it's with a gun (obtained legally or not), a car, or a bomb. Anyone sufficiently motivated to try to assassinate someone else (or even just go on a rampage) will not be deterred by not having a gun. They'll either make a gun, make a spear, make a shiv, rent a truck, and so on. Where having a weapon helps is (in theory) not being prey.
However, in doing so, they also have to assume that that person's friends or neighbors are not armed. I'm pretty certain that an armed citizen witnessing a robbery across the street is even more of a threat to the criminal.
Risking damage to an engine when you shoot [at] a hijacker is better than letting the plane get turned into a giant cruise missile with the target of their choosing.
That said, I agree. I'd rather simply have the right to carry a knife on the plane. When five out of six guys, and several of the women, are carrying weapons, hostage situations are unlikely to happen, or last long. (Also, locking doors are awesome and effective.)
They might in ten years when everything you ever want to use (and all the hardware used by them) is built to conform to its specs.
I don't think it's much of a stretch to imagine Anonymous people spamming the system with false accusations, whether for laughs or out of a sense of protest.
Aye, and the instant we open up, so will China and Russia. I don't think that's really a winning scenario, unless you're already in your orbital babe-station repopulating the human race.
The fact that we now have the technology to even need to make such a distinction is what makes it tech-related, and not merely political. Of course it's political, but discussion of the ethical merits is certainly nerd-worthy also.
Look at it this way. If we had the technology to read minds perfectly, would we execute terrorists on the spot? What level of intent or animosity to a regime's policy or actions would be ethically sufficient to do that? It all hinges on if we had the technology, though. Sixty years ago, we did not have the capability that we now do for monitoring persons of interest in real-time, 24/7, the way we currently can. Now, we can get video feeds of insurgents putting bombs on roads, or track individuals when they leave a meeting with someone and kill them when they are alone, from halfway around the world. That's the sort of surveillance that was literally science fiction eighty years ago (1984), combined with a remote strike capability that also was first discussed in fiction. The transition from science fiction to current capabilities is amazing, and a little scary.
How does one verify such a claim? I don't even know what evidence to look for.
Indoor cats have no problem staying out of your neighbor's yard, and often are much safer than outdoor pets (depending on the presence/lethality of local predators, or the volume of traffic near your home).
With the right questions, and a victim who is actually guilty, you might get verifiable truths. However, that already depends on the person actually being "guilty" or having knowledge. In the case where your victim is the Wrong Guy, you could easily get them to confess to stuff (especially if the interrogation is contaminated with stuff that the interrogators know but tell the victim) that they didn't do.
Also, consider torturing the Wrong Guy. (We'll pretend that the interrogator doesn't know he's the Wrong Guy.) At some point, you ask him for a verifiable truth about Something, and he doesn't give it. He claims not to know, to be the wrong guy. When torturing, you threaten him with (or enact) bodily harm. You still won't know whether he's lying about "not knowing", and you'll have harmed the Wrong Guy. The fact that in the (potentially rare) case where you have the Right Guy you can sometimes get good info (but often might not) does not excuse using torture. Not even when you're Jack Bauer trying to save the world.