Bismark once noted that no one wants to know how laws and sausage are made. Thankfully we have the USDA and FDA to protect us from unscrupulous sausage makers. We can take solace in the knowledge that someone is looking out for us and squeamishness aside, we can demand to know how sausage is made and not be afraid. But what is to protect us from the law makers?
Since September 2001, many decisions have been made for us under the banners of "National security" and "Protecting America." Our politicians have made adult decisions for us and treated us as squeamish children who wouldn't want to know (couldn't stand to know) what was being done to "keep America safe." But this is an insulting and pernicious stance for politicians to take. Americans need to discuss these issues in the open-- that is in part what makes America America.
At first, I was wondering what kind of idiot would pick a country that has an extradition treaty with the US. But I think I now see the shrewd choice that it was. America often chastises China for its human and civil rights record (and rightly so). If a Chinese citizen were to disclose information regarding a secret Chinese surveillance program, there is a good chance he would be given political asylum in the US. Dissidents fighting for civil and human rights have often been accepted into the US because of a shared goal of freedom and transparency. If the US demands and Hong Kong accepts (and by proxy China because they have veto power) a request for extradition, the United States of America would lose its moral high ground to tell China or any other country what to do. Lets not forget that America had legalized slavery and until only 40 short years ago, an institutionalized second class status for non-whites. America has "found Jesus" and feels the need to scold other nations that do not share our ideals of democracy and freedom. Extraditing Snowden would show us to be the shallow hypocrites that we so often are.
President Obama said he welcomed the chance to discuss the balance between civil liberties and privacy in protecting America. In that case, I think we should thank Edward Snowden for this chance to start this much needed discussion on sausage making.
"...no reasonable person..." -- Well, that escalated quickly.
That's a bit rich. Your replies have been brusque bordering on arrogant. Things like:
No, you're misreading the article.... The rootkit isn't in RAM only.
English is just a really shitty language to convey specific information. This is a common problem.
Your replies are inconsistent with the summary and article without supporting information-- and can easily be interpreted as condescending. Perhaps the summary/article are incorrect-- it has happened before. I like to give people the benefit of doubt on Slashdot because there are a lot of really smart people with specialized knowledge-- perhaps they really have an insight that 99% of people don't have. If you have worked on exploits, perhaps you have special insights as well. But the novelty of this rootkit that was __stressed__ in the title, summary, and the article was that it was only in RAM and "didn't touch files on the disk." I think you have to have discussions assuming this is correct or at the very least give supporting evidence for why it is not possible.
You do neither-- you give replies that are at odds with the article, apparently without special insight into THIS memory only rootkit or give a rational argument for why this is not possible. You can't argue that you have never seen this before-- that is what makes this novel and worthy of discussion.
I am open minded but at the same time, I don't believe that all interpretations are equivalent-- your reading just doesn't make sense, i.e. is not reasonable. That is what I meant by "no reasonable person." No hostility was intended.
The rootkit didn't 'touch' the files on the disk. That doesn't speak to the rootkit's location, only to its actions.
If in fact the rootkit is located on the hard drive, how did it get there? Any process/program that wrote the necessary file(s) to the hard drive could rightly be considered part of the rootkit. Unless you are invoking another program/process writing the necessary files to the hard drive, I don't think you can square (1) not touching files on the hard drive with (2) this being called an "in-memory" root kit and (3) the root kit being located on the hard drive.
Granted, the writers could be writing deceptively and ambiguously to hype their findings (or the translation from German might be introducing biases-- I can't read German) but I think you are also parsing the summary (and possibly article) in ways that no reasonable person would. I have this suspicion that you find yourself in a logical hole and can't stop digging.
...they used a previously unknown rootkit that doesn't touch any hard disk files.
The quote appears rather unambiguous and I am tending to disagree with your interpretation of the summary. Do you have specific knowledge that others are not privy to? Or are you biasing your interpretation to fit what you think to be true?
As for English being a shitty language, I think you can write ambiguously in just about any language. You can also certainly write unambiguously and and concisely in English (I would think this to be true for most languages, but I don't want to state that as a matter of fact because that would be conjecture).
Joking aside, wouldn't you expect a restart to eradicate a RAM resident rootkit? Granted the vulnerability still exists and it is possible to be reinfected/rerooted, a simple reboot should get rid of this.
The difference is that a finger print DOES not point the cops in the direction of a relative the way DNA could.
This is not a hypothetical. A quick search for "rapist found dna son" comes up with several different cases were rapists were identified when the DNA of a close relative/son was entered into the database. I am all for rapists and violent criminals being taken off the streets but feel torn about how it is being done. The SCOTUS is also clearly torn considering the Republican/Democratic split in the vote. (Yes, I used Republican/Democratic rather than conservative/liberal because I think it more fitting in the vast majority of cases).
It appears the chase was preceded by a "physical altercation" and a "fatal officer-involved shooting." You can also make an argument for testosterone-fueled fights and shootings but it seems that the police had reason to be chasing these guys and the alleged bad guys had a reason to run. Oh yeah, they were also all gang members on probation.
With all due respect to Dr Hawking, I have to disagree. If humans make earth uninhabitable for themselves over the course of a few centuries, I sincerely hope we are unable and incapable of spreading our garbage to the rest of the universe and let the end result of the industrial revolution experiment end here on earth.
I guess I am firmly in the realm of knowing enough to get myself into trouble. I use Mac OS X 10.7 and have Macports installed. I just installed python 2.7.4 to stay current. When I start up python, it was still v2.7.1. Trying to figure out why, it seems that python is installed in too many places!
The original Apple installs are in/System/Library/Frameworks/Python and include versions 2.3 , 2.5.6, 2.6.7 and 2.7.1. The python foundation installs into/Library/Frameworks/Python. Furthermore, macports has taken over python and decides which one should be executed using a link from/opt/local/bin/python which currently ->/usr/bin/python2.7 which is the Apple installed 2.7.1.
I once tried to get rid of python 2.3 and 2.5 (who uses those, right?) and found out that iPhoto didn't work anymore!
Has anyone found a saner, neater and more space efficient way to organize all the python installs on Mac OS X?
The volume of water used for fracking is enormous. According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracking#Water), large wells use 5M gallons of water which in Olympic size pool units is ~7.5.
You can't truck this from site to site. You would have to build a pipeline. Even storing that volume becomes a problem.
This absurd tool/technology to allow you to eat more than you should reminds me of the debt ceiling debate in congress right now.
1. Congress authorizes spending through laws and thereby controls spending. 2. Various agencies spend the money that is authorized BY CONGRESS. 3. Congress controls revenue by setting tax codes. (any shortfall, ie deficit, is their doing). 4. Refuse to cover the difference. 5. Default!!! (although I am sure some people will profit from this)
Congress and people should have the foresight and control to plan and eat reasonably. Please note that I did not say spend responsibly because that is only part of the problem-- congress needs to tax AND spend responsibly.
1. Would send out a slightly different version of the letter (misspell a word, transpose words, different punctuation, white space, etc) to each person disguised as a mass/group email. 2. Find out which version is leaked and trace back to the individual. 3. Profit!
Dr Dawkins, I enjoyed your talk last week at the UCLA campus. I was wondering your thoughts on the applicability of evolutionary theory to politics. During your talk, I was drawing the parallels between genes and political ideas. Organisms contain a multitude of genes being selected through fitness of survival on Earth. "Good" genes are selected for, "bad" genes, against. In the same way, politicians contain a multitude of ideas, and their fitness is tested in elections. Politicians don't necessarily die after losing an election (although politically they often do), they reformulate their ideas. Politicians adopt winning ideas, abandon losing ideas, in a sense throwing out bad genes and adopt good ones. They then test their fitness in another round of elections. I would think that after a number of iterations, that we would have politicians with some damn good ideas. But here we are.
Yes, I understand that voters do a different/worse job of selecting "goodness" than nature does and perhaps it is true that we get the government that we deserve. They are judged by two contradictory measures of goodness (at least in the US). Perhaps the voting and fitness phenotype in voters are being selected for and against by the very government they select. Just some random musings from someone anxiously waiting for the elections to end.
Perhaps there is a bias to include Americans, maybe not. But I think using the Wright brothers is the wrong example to pick if you want to prove your point. They did a lot more than just "happen to be around" when internal engines became light enough and powerful enough. Their realization of the need for and development of three axis control made controlled flight possible. Without proper control, the addition of and engine would have eventually led to a fate similar to Otto Lilienthal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Lilienthal#Final_flight). Lilienthal's gliders were controlled by shifting weight around-- he died when his glider stalled. The Wright brother's ability to independently control pitch, yaw and roll is the breakthrough that truly made powered flight a reality.
OK, I'll bite. That does sound absurd. But then explain why politicians are _overwhelmingly_ white, male, and christian. Why is it that you can _accuse_ a politician of being muslim? It is absurd but to ignore the real state of the current situation is even more absurd.
Another thing, invoking Ayn Rand as a guiding light for economics makes about as much sense as invoking Gene Roddenberry for space exploration.
When I see thinking like this, it makes me truly sad. I am torn between thinking you are a rational actor and a self centered dipshit. I think about the tragedy of the commons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons). The rational thing to do is to grab everything you can-- the inevitable end is total devastation.
If you grow bacteria on a petri dish, they will grow until nutrients are depleted and waste products accumulate-- then they die. A few centuries ago, the earth was in a self sustaining state. Population growth was kept in check by our ability to get enough food and calories. Starting with the industrial revolution we are now able harness the energy stored over millions of years (petroleum hydrocarbons) to push mountains, harvest the desert, build skyscrapers, send robots to Mars-- truly awe inspiring achievements. Now population growth is not food/calorie limited-- I can take $3, head down to the corner 7/11 and get more calories than are good for me.
I worry that humans have "evolved" such that they are now able to replay the tragedy of the commons on a global scale. I think that if we as a global community can't come together to solve these issues then we deserve what we get. What makes me very pessimistic about the future is that deep down inside, I think you are both a rational actor and a total dipshit.
You mean like "my program has a bug?" You probably don't mean there is moth interfering with a relay closing. Certain phrases come to encompass more than their original meaning.
I think Apple tends to push updates for their phones for longer than are offered for Android devices.
In my case, there is no OTA update -- a lot of people have been waiting since it was announced in late 2010 for the Optimus V. Virgin Mobile still sells this phone with Android 2.2.
My point wasn't that one philosophy (open vs walled garden) is better or not. My point is that upgrading of the open Android firmware is difficult. Perhaps it is hard like the early days of installing Linux on any hardware but possibly made more difficult on purpose by handset manufacturers to promote new sales.
Kidding aside, I think Jobs was right on this one. Because phones are locked and drivers for the phone devices are difficult obtain, the closed vs open source OS is a moot point. Android might be open but there are real hurdles to updating the Android firmware on phones-- handset manufactures just don't want you to do it.
I have a Virgin Mobile LG phone running Android 2.2. I am still waiting for the 2.3 upgrade promised sometime in 2010. I've thought about installing one of the cyanogenmod firmwares but the lack of support for all phone features gives me pause-- oh and the risk of bricking my phone. I like tinkering with electronics but I like my phone to phone.
you can get a siphon effect fairly easily. This draws dirty water from the tub back into the water supply.
I am having a hard time understanding how this can happen. How can two feet of water pressure (depth of bathtub) cause siphoning of water from the tub into the high pressure water system. I don't think I could do this if I tried. If they have less than two feet of water pressure, then yes, they have infrastructure problems.
Perhaps you are talking about a venturi effect? If the sprayer comes off at an angle from the faucet/pipe used to fill the tub, you can possibly draw water backwards into the sprayer hose but this is still downstream from the faucet and will not go back into the main water supply.
Slashdot Mirror
Bismark once noted that no one wants to know how laws and sausage are made. Thankfully we have the USDA and FDA to protect us from unscrupulous sausage makers. We can take solace in the knowledge that someone is looking out for us and squeamishness aside, we can demand to know how sausage is made and not be afraid. But what is to protect us from the law makers?
Since September 2001, many decisions have been made for us under the banners of "National security" and "Protecting America." Our politicians have made adult decisions for us and treated us as squeamish children who wouldn't want to know (couldn't stand to know) what was being done to "keep America safe." But this is an insulting and pernicious stance for politicians to take. Americans need to discuss these issues in the open-- that is in part what makes America America.
At first, I was wondering what kind of idiot would pick a country that has an extradition treaty with the US. But I think I now see the shrewd choice that it was. America often chastises China for its human and civil rights record (and rightly so). If a Chinese citizen were to disclose information regarding a secret Chinese surveillance program, there is a good chance he would be given political asylum in the US. Dissidents fighting for civil and human rights have often been accepted into the US because of a shared goal of freedom and transparency. If the US demands and Hong Kong accepts (and by proxy China because they have veto power) a request for extradition, the United States of America would lose its moral high ground to tell China or any other country what to do. Lets not forget that America had legalized slavery and until only 40 short years ago, an institutionalized second class status for non-whites. America has "found Jesus" and feels the need to scold other nations that do not share our ideals of democracy and freedom. Extraditing Snowden would show us to be the shallow hypocrites that we so often are.
President Obama said he welcomed the chance to discuss the balance between civil liberties and privacy in protecting America. In that case, I think we should thank Edward Snowden for this chance to start this much needed discussion on sausage making.
"...no reasonable person..." -- Well, that escalated quickly.
That's a bit rich. Your replies have been brusque bordering on arrogant. Things like:
No, you're misreading the article.... The rootkit isn't in RAM only.
English is just a really shitty language to convey specific information. This is a common problem.
Your replies are inconsistent with the summary and article without supporting information-- and can easily be interpreted as condescending. Perhaps the summary/article are incorrect-- it has happened before. I like to give people the benefit of doubt on Slashdot because there are a lot of really smart people with specialized knowledge-- perhaps they really have an insight that 99% of people don't have. If you have worked on exploits, perhaps you have special insights as well. But the novelty of this rootkit that was __stressed__ in the title, summary, and the article was that it was only in RAM and "didn't touch files on the disk." I think you have to have discussions assuming this is correct or at the very least give supporting evidence for why it is not possible.
You do neither-- you give replies that are at odds with the article, apparently without special insight into THIS memory only rootkit or give a rational argument for why this is not possible. You can't argue that you have never seen this before-- that is what makes this novel and worthy of discussion.
I am open minded but at the same time, I don't believe that all interpretations are equivalent-- your reading just doesn't make sense, i.e. is not reasonable. That is what I meant by "no reasonable person." No hostility was intended.
The rootkit didn't 'touch' the files on the disk. That doesn't speak to the rootkit's location, only to its actions.
If in fact the rootkit is located on the hard drive, how did it get there? Any process/program that wrote the necessary file(s) to the hard drive could rightly be considered part of the rootkit. Unless you are invoking another program/process writing the necessary files to the hard drive, I don't think you can square (1) not touching files on the hard drive with (2) this being called an "in-memory" root kit and (3) the root kit being located on the hard drive.
Granted, the writers could be writing deceptively and ambiguously to hype their findings (or the translation from German might be introducing biases-- I can't read German) but I think you are also parsing the summary (and possibly article) in ways that no reasonable person would. I have this suspicion that you find yourself in a logical hole and can't stop digging.
FTA
...they used a previously unknown rootkit that doesn't touch any hard disk files.
The quote appears rather unambiguous and I am tending to disagree with your interpretation of the summary. Do you have specific knowledge that others are not privy to? Or are you biasing your interpretation to fit what you think to be true?
As for English being a shitty language, I think you can write ambiguously in just about any language. You can also certainly write unambiguously and and concisely in English (I would think this to be true for most languages, but I don't want to state that as a matter of fact because that would be conjecture).
Joking aside, wouldn't you expect a restart to eradicate a RAM resident rootkit? Granted the vulnerability still exists and it is possible to be reinfected/rerooted, a simple reboot should get rid of this.
The difference is that a finger print DOES not point the cops in the direction of a relative the way DNA could.
This is not a hypothetical. A quick search for "rapist found dna son" comes up with several different cases were rapists were identified when the DNA of a close relative/son was entered into the database. I am all for rapists and violent criminals being taken off the streets but feel torn about how it is being done. The SCOTUS is also clearly torn considering the Republican/Democratic split in the vote. (Yes, I used Republican/Democratic rather than conservative/liberal because I think it more fitting in the vast majority of cases).
Another article gives a bit more information than the one in the summary:
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/orange_county&id=9122999
It appears the chase was preceded by a "physical altercation" and a "fatal officer-involved shooting." You can also make an argument for testosterone-fueled fights and shootings but it seems that the police had reason to be chasing these guys and the alleged bad guys had a reason to run. Oh yeah, they were also all gang members on probation.
With all due respect to Dr Hawking, I have to disagree. If humans make earth uninhabitable for themselves over the course of a few centuries, I sincerely hope we are unable and incapable of spreading our garbage to the rest of the universe and let the end result of the industrial revolution experiment end here on earth.
I guess I am firmly in the realm of knowing enough to get myself into trouble. I use Mac OS X 10.7 and have Macports installed. I just installed python 2.7.4 to stay current. When I start up python, it was still v2.7.1. Trying to figure out why, it seems that python is installed in too many places!
The original Apple installs are in /System/Library/Frameworks/Python and include versions 2.3 , 2.5.6, 2.6.7 and 2.7.1. /Library/Frameworks/Python. Furthermore, macports has taken over python and decides which one should be executed using a link from /opt/local/bin/python which currently ->/usr/bin/python2.7 which is the Apple installed 2.7.1.
The python foundation installs into
I once tried to get rid of python 2.3 and 2.5 (who uses those, right?) and found out that iPhoto didn't work anymore!
Has anyone found a saner, neater and more space efficient way to organize all the python installs on Mac OS X?
The volume of water used for fracking is enormous. According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracking#Water), large wells use 5M gallons of water which in Olympic size pool units is ~7.5.
You can't truck this from site to site. You would have to build a pipeline. Even storing that volume becomes a problem.
Pedestrian comment is pedestrian.
I think they are projecting. And if the shoe fits...
This absurd tool/technology to allow you to eat more than you should reminds me of the debt ceiling debate in congress right now.
1. Congress authorizes spending through laws and thereby controls spending.
2. Various agencies spend the money that is authorized BY CONGRESS.
3. Congress controls revenue by setting tax codes. (any shortfall, ie deficit, is their doing).
4. Refuse to cover the difference.
5. Default!!! (although I am sure some people will profit from this)
Congress and people should have the foresight and control to plan and eat reasonably. Please note that I did not say spend responsibly because that is only part of the problem-- congress needs to tax AND spend responsibly.
Doesn't quite fit the meme but here goes:
1. Would send out a slightly different version of the letter (misspell a word, transpose words, different punctuation, white space, etc) to each person disguised as a mass/group email.
2. Find out which version is leaked and trace back to the individual.
3. Profit!
To paraphrase Churchill, "Gentlemen, we have run out of spectral bandwidth. Now we have to think."
Dr Dawkins,
I enjoyed your talk last week at the UCLA campus. I was wondering your thoughts on the applicability of evolutionary theory to politics. During your talk, I was drawing the parallels between genes and political ideas. Organisms contain a multitude of genes being selected through fitness of survival on Earth. "Good" genes are selected for, "bad" genes, against. In the same way, politicians contain a multitude of ideas, and their fitness is tested in elections. Politicians don't necessarily die after losing an election (although politically they often do), they reformulate their ideas. Politicians adopt winning ideas, abandon losing ideas, in a sense throwing out bad genes and adopt good ones. They then test their fitness in another round of elections. I would think that after a number of iterations, that we would have politicians with some damn good ideas. But here we are.
Yes, I understand that voters do a different/worse job of selecting "goodness" than nature does and perhaps it is true that we get the government that we deserve. They are judged by two contradictory measures of goodness (at least in the US). Perhaps the voting and fitness phenotype in voters are being selected for and against by the very government they select. Just some random musings from someone anxiously waiting for the elections to end.
Peter
Obfuscated Perl is redundant.
Perhaps there is a bias to include Americans, maybe not. But I think using the Wright brothers is the wrong example to pick if you want to prove your point. They did a lot more than just "happen to be around" when internal engines became light enough and powerful enough. Their realization of the need for and development of three axis control made controlled flight possible. Without proper control, the addition of and engine would have eventually led to a fate similar to Otto Lilienthal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Lilienthal#Final_flight). Lilienthal's gliders were controlled by shifting weight around-- he died when his glider stalled. The Wright brother's ability to independently control pitch, yaw and roll is the breakthrough that truly made powered flight a reality.
OK, I'll bite. That does sound absurd. But then explain why politicians are _overwhelmingly_ white, male, and christian. Why is it that you can _accuse_ a politician of being muslim? It is absurd but to ignore the real state of the current situation is even more absurd.
Another thing, invoking Ayn Rand as a guiding light for economics makes about as much sense as invoking Gene Roddenberry for space exploration.
When I see thinking like this, it makes me truly sad. I am torn between thinking you are a rational actor and a self centered dipshit. I think about the tragedy of the commons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons). The rational thing to do is to grab everything you can-- the inevitable end is total devastation.
If you grow bacteria on a petri dish, they will grow until nutrients are depleted and waste products accumulate-- then they die. A few centuries ago, the earth was in a self sustaining state. Population growth was kept in check by our ability to get enough food and calories. Starting with the industrial revolution we are now able harness the energy stored over millions of years (petroleum hydrocarbons) to push mountains, harvest the desert, build skyscrapers, send robots to Mars-- truly awe inspiring achievements. Now population growth is not food/calorie limited-- I can take $3, head down to the corner 7/11 and get more calories than are good for me.
I worry that humans have "evolved" such that they are now able to replay the tragedy of the commons on a global scale. I think that if we as a global community can't come together to solve these issues then we deserve what we get. What makes me very pessimistic about the future is that deep down inside, I think you are both a rational actor and a total dipshit.
You mean like "my program has a bug?" You probably don't mean there is moth interfering with a relay closing.
Certain phrases come to encompass more than their original meaning.
I think Apple tends to push updates for their phones for longer than are offered for Android devices.
In my case, there is no OTA update -- a lot of people have been waiting since it was announced in late 2010 for the Optimus V. Virgin Mobile still sells this phone with Android 2.2.
My point wasn't that one philosophy (open vs walled garden) is better or not. My point is that upgrading of the open Android firmware is difficult. Perhaps it is hard like the early days of installing Linux on any hardware but possibly made more difficult on purpose by handset manufacturers to promote new sales.
Here are directions from someone on the Android team: http://twitter.com/arubin/status/27808662429
Kidding aside, I think Jobs was right on this one. Because phones are locked and drivers for the phone devices are difficult obtain, the closed vs open source OS is a moot point. Android might be open but there are real hurdles to updating the Android firmware on phones-- handset manufactures just don't want you to do it.
I have a Virgin Mobile LG phone running Android 2.2. I am still waiting for the 2.3 upgrade promised sometime in 2010. I've thought about installing one of the cyanogenmod firmwares but the lack of support for all phone features gives me pause-- oh and the risk of bricking my phone. I like tinkering with electronics but I like my phone to phone.
he uses vi
you can get a siphon effect fairly easily. This draws dirty water from the tub back into the water supply.
I am having a hard time understanding how this can happen. How can two feet of water pressure (depth of bathtub) cause siphoning of water from the tub into the high pressure water system. I don't think I could do this if I tried. If they have less than two feet of water pressure, then yes, they have infrastructure problems.
Perhaps you are talking about a venturi effect? If the sprayer comes off at an angle from the faucet/pipe used to fill the tub, you can possibly draw water backwards into the sprayer hose but this is still downstream from the faucet and will not go back into the main water supply.