The headline is strangely construed to convey a false sense of security that large satellite dish systems are not ripe for hacking. All systems are no stronger than their weakest (back) door.
Tobacco when it was first used some 400 years ago was much less addictive than it is today. It is legal, companies have been using all the scientific methods available to them to enhance the addictiveness of the product to sell more of it. Progressively the nicotine content increased. I know of people who have kicked all other habits including cocaine but were struggling to kick tobacco.
Make pot legal, direct all the scientific research to increase the potency, throw in the possible geneically modified crops... Pretty soon you could have a legal product, producing billions of dollars of tax revenue that is addictive far beyond what tobacco became. Those who support legalization of pot, should demand an absolute limit on the narcotic content of marijuana and make sure government does not get addicted to tax revenue from pot.
Most senior managers are also older than general population. At least some of them came of age before the PC era, mostly during e-mail era. The older folks really do not understand how computers work, or how the networks are secured or how much damage an intruder into their network can do. So we can blame at least part of the problem to their age, than management.
Also most senior managers have flunkies, sidekicks and general assistants who do most of the errands for them. Some of them are not capable of doing very simple things like booking all the things needed for a vacation package over the internet.
Add to this the sense of entitlement and belief that they are really really smart because otherwise how can you explain the free markets bestowing upon them huge salaries? They must be smart there is no other explanation in their mind. So they get really really careless.
For work-related passwords, my boss has every right to know my passwords if I get sick.
Access to the work related accounts should not depend cooperation from the employee. Trust employees to be gruntled but have contingency plans for the !gruntled too. And incapacitated, and the inaccessible as well.
My boss can simply as the sys admin to change the password of accounts on servers controlled by my employer. I don't ask my staff to reveal their passwords to me, and when they leave or get fired, it is standard ops to reset their passwords, archive the $home and give me access to those files.
But increasingly some of the work is getting outsourced. For example webex accounts are not authenticated by our servers. But still, out IT has higher level access to their tech support and my employer can get access to my work related external accounts too. I wonder how the stop the access if/when employees leave. Something to check up with IT.
Pick some nerdy site, say slashdot, and create an account. Use your password as the username, but it won't stand out in such sites. Cackling devilishly at the foolishness of the masses who do not realize that your password is hiding in plain sight is optional.
I am a simple cheapskate and could not bear to part with 2000$ for a car-nav system that will be woefully out of date in 2 years and the car maker would be demanding 900$ for a map update, and the user interface might have been usable at some point in the design before the bean counters and marketers muscled in looking for brand differentiation and cool and oomph factor. So I have a cheap Garmin with a suction cup holder next to shifter.
Most people look at it and ask my why or at least raise an eye brow. Now I can simply say, "NSA". And they will nod understandingly and my mojo as the rebel who defies the draconian government will go up one notch.
Some people talk about automotive technology turn over time frames being 10 years and the electronic industry technology turn over period being 18 months to be the fundamental reason for automobile infotainment systems sucking big time. Add to it corporations thinking, "they bought our car, now we will make handsome profits by making them pay through their nose for map updates and this and that". But root cause of the problem is even more fundamental than this.
Basically automotive engineers, especially the IC engine worshiping kind, hate electrical engineering. They have been playing in the pissing contest of 0 to 60 time, and quarter mile time since 1930s. Their game is strapping heavier and heavier, increasingly powerful IC engines on to piddly little frames that can hardly hold the huge engines in. Then they go to track after track, magazine after magazine touting their cars and the 5.4 sec and 4.8 sec times.
But the IC engine is fundamentally unsuitable for automobiles. Their engines can not pull a car from rest. They have come up with frustratingly complex set of gears and clutches and "hydromatic" torque converters and slip disks and this and that to get the car to go to 0 to 2 mph. From 2 or 5 or 7 mph they can accelerate it well. But even there if they just used an IC engine running at constant speed to turn a generator and drive the car through electric motors they could have won their quarter mile races and 0 to 60 times nicely. It might not be economical, it might not make consumer grade, but in their concept cars, in their brand image cars and the super luxury segment where cost does not matter, they could have tried it. But they did not. It is not that the concept is unknown. Diesel electric locomotives have been in operation since 1950s. In fact the steam engines were replaced by diesel electric locomotives so fast, many steam locomotives made by Baldwin Loco Works, Philadelphia went straight from production line to scrap yard! Seeing the enormous torque these electric motors were delivering did not inspire even one auto engineers to try to have a flag ship concept car that would see if an electric motor would help them in their pissing contests. It took an outsider Musk who is not afraid of electricity to show them what an electric motor could do in a car with Tesla.
When they did not even understand electrical technology well, why would they do well with electronics?
The most common one is Creationist vulgaris. (vulgar means common in Latin, it does not mean crude). They are the rank and file people who chip in money and votes. The votes and the money form the base of the food pyramid of this genus. The C vulgaris can be relied up on to show up for rallys, to cheer their side in "debates".
One level up the food chain comes Creationist predatori minoria. These are the local parish level civic leaders, community organizers. They too sincerely believe in creationism and believe not believing in it would cause gloom and doom. And they convince themselves, that to have strong faith means they have to believe in creationism despite the obvious and patent evidence they see against it. But mostly these people go for local fame, some local power and a feeling of self importance. These are the ones used by the species higher in the food pyramid to access the nourishment created by the C vulgaris.
The highest level of this ecological niche is occupied the head honcho, the top predator, Creationist predatori majoria. Their meal ticket is C vulgaris. They will send newsletters, gather them into lectures and scare them into donating big money for the "cause". They will convince C predatori minoria to gather the flock and deliver them to the creation museum each paying $24.99 or whatever and buy "Jesus" T shirts at 40$ a pop.
So please do not treat all the Creationists as one and the same. Pity the C vulgaris, for he does not know what he is doing. Try to show the self aggrandizement and obvious exploitation of the C predatori majoria to the minoria to make them less enthusiastic about being hand maidens in this enterprise. Starved of the nutrition, the majoria will diminish greatly in size. Hopefully.
In philosophical debates, and in legal courtroom battles, both sides get equal time. That seems to be fair. But when it comes to science, equal time for both sides is unfair. When science has so much more evidence to show, restricting it to the same time whatever the other side manages to come up with is unfair.
Further, most of the "arguments" for creationism is asking questions, asking for proof about evolution or to explain this anomaly or that observation. Asking questions is easy, answering them takes much longer. So again it is unfair to give equal time to questions and answers.
Science demands full disclosure, sufficient time to review the evidence and to get a consensus on what the data is. Then the argument is about what explains the data. This creationism debate is not likely to persuade the creationists, it is likely to frustrate the scientists.
It is a fools errand. Best thing to do is to let them disbelieve in evolution and let us trust evolution to drive the creationists to extinction. In the last 400 years science has done a lot to reduce the influence of creationists and reduced their numbers a lot. Just read the Creationist rhetoric from 1920s or 1950s or 1870s and compare it the current set of arguments, you will see how weak their ilk has become. The only serious bastion for creationists are the fundamentalists in Islam and fundamentalist right wingers in the USA. Almost all the rest of the developed world have moved on, most of America has also accepted the explanatory powers of evolution. Just wait for these creationists to join the Dinosaurs.
ARS Technica asks, 'How does a non-technical manager add value to a team of self-motivated software developers?'
Ars Technica asks the rhetorical question, "what use are the non technical managers?", then finds the answer as, "they solve non technical problems". They might do further research and find that adding technical managers to projects will solve technical problems too!
If you CC get stolen... you will have to FIGHT to get charges removed unless you live in peter pan land where the fairy can fix it for you.
Well, I had two CC and one Debit card breach and one false alarm.
CC 1: @ Chicago, at a Target in fact. Did not use that card anywhere else in Chicago. No hassle to get the charges reversed. Some 5000$ in damage.
CC 2: @ London. Told them we were going out of the country. The fraudsters were charging it even after we returned and charged card in USA. Dim witted CC company did not smell a rat. But no hassles to reverse about 4000$ in damage.
Debit card: @ Aldi. The crooks pretended to be service technicians and installed skimmers at the check out counters. About 5000$ in damage, reversed without issues. But my debit card company will refund third party ATM charges too. So they refunded some 15$ in 3rd party ATM fees, then reversed all charges including the ATM fees. Was planning to call back and let them know they had refunded too much, but the cost of handling that call would exceed 15$ for them, so gave them a break and kept that 15$.:-)
False alarm: Charged a Las Vegas package, couple of watches and some dresses in 15 minute span as an anniversary surprise gift for the missus. Triggered a fraud alert call that let the cat out of the bag and spoiled the surprise. Thanks Obama.
So it is quite easy to get the fraudulent charges reversed. But the credit card companies could send SMS text for every charge and make a big dent in fraud charges. They don't seem to care. In India my brother gets SMS as soon as the merchant charges something. Funny, in India, they put ATM machines inside tiny stores with armed guards.
As you can see, within seconds of connecting the new USB device to the computer, a report is sent to watson.microsoft.com in HTTP (clear text). This report includes a considerable amount of information that is URL encoded into the request. This information includes:
Every time you plug in a device to USB port, a di-ding bell sounds. It is of utmost importance to Microsoft to know a bell has rung, so that it can promote an angel second class to angel first class with wings.
See? There is an innocent explanation for it after all.
Birth control pills are cheap compared to the cost of deliver, pre and post-natal care. It is quite possible for the insurance companies to charge more to withhold pills.
Probably because she happened to be the "duty officer" over the holidays. Earlier the SCOTUS rejected an identical petition saying they can't sue till they are actually harmed. On 1st Jan the law kicks in, someone can claim injury. At this point the old ruling is moot and should be reversed. It was probably her turn to be on call over this holiday break, so she did the ritual of granting temporary relief. Note she did so with the minimal ruling benefiting only the petitioner.
The posting sums up the proximal or immediate cause very well. But what is the ultimate cause? Why does Microsoft do what it does?
Basically because when the company got big, the original set with fire in the belly, passion, and competition cashed out or burnt out. The second echelon came in, used short term policies got their goodies and went out. The management that remained all came of age when Microsoft was so dominant they could put out start ups that could threaten them just by press releases of vaporware. They used every trick in the book to leverage their monopoly status. They never learnt any new tricks and they can not thrive in a real level playing field without monopoly advantages.
May be it is a harsh assessment, and company that big could never be managed well, not in fast changing computer business.
Talking from personal experience, all the bugs I ever committed to production were coded in between 1 PM and 2 PM, my sleepiest time, when my stomach digesting the lunch was competing with the brain for blood supply.
If I am a columnist with some modest name recognition I could have converted this mildly amusing (to me at least) observation into a column. But alas, I am not one. So he gets to repeat the age old advice given by old Prof Mahabala, teaching Intro to Computing 201, (Fortran programming, in IBM 365/155 using punch cards no less ) back in 1980 into a column, and all I get to do is to bitch about it.
Scene 1: A mechanic working in an auto plant listens to the chief engineer describing the new model car that is going to be manufactured. Stands up and says the engine design is not suitable for the market it was intended. Chief engineer sneers at him, "You lowly mechanic, you have the temerity to challenge me? Grease monkey! Go find a CV boot to clean or something!". All the assembled people laugh and the mechanic walks out head hanging in shame.
Scene 2: Walks to his work spot, his side kick (always the comedian, by the rules of that film industry) walks up to him and tries to console him. Our hero mechanic snaps, "Load Ansys in this computer!" and movie cuts to a image of a wire frame finite element mesh of a piston and a connecting rod rotating in 3D. [Screen resolution was too poor for me to find the actual product, despite freezing and stepping through it frame by frame].
Which Hollywood movie? brrrrrrrrrrrrrp. wrong country!
Japanese? Korean? Or may be Taiwanese?. No, No and No.
May be a Bollywood movie? right country. Wrong language.
Where then?
A Tamil movie, made in South India! About six years old. Eat our dust America, Tamils are making heroes out of finite element analyzing auto mechanics!
There is some rumblings from the other side of the big divide. They don't like the three laws of robotics. Apparently some activist robots have gathered around some port and are dumping chests of hydraulic fluids and batteries over board. They are seen to be shouting, "Governance with the consent of the governed", "No jurisdiction without representation".
There are many entities with vested interest to keep the data that supports their point of view, or their profit motive or their meal ticket alive. For example data collected meticulously by a underfunded biology professor about the allotropic speciation of the salamanders around the lake hole-in-the-mud would disappear in a jiffy. But flawed research supporting the efficacy of a patented clot busting drug would be perpetuated. Epidemiological studies showing the adverse side effects of the same drug would be hunted down and eradicated.
History is written by the winners. At least part of the data/research preservation is done people with vested interests preserving it selectively.
Wasn't there a virus that was using the speaker and ultrasound to communicate and replicate? They had a clean room and an airgap still the viruses got in through the speaker and mic,
Slashdot Mirror
The headline is strangely construed to convey a false sense of security that large satellite dish systems are not ripe for hacking. All systems are no stronger than their weakest (back) door.
Make pot legal, direct all the scientific research to increase the potency, throw in the possible geneically modified crops ... Pretty soon you could have a legal product, producing billions of dollars of tax revenue that is addictive far beyond what tobacco became. Those who support legalization of pot, should demand an absolute limit on the narcotic content of marijuana and make sure government does not get addicted to tax revenue from pot.
On the internet, if you give him a mask "he will start trolling".
The internet is my mask, you insensitive clod!
Nah, even gmail hides all the previous thread under a tiny icon that has three dots.
Also most senior managers have flunkies, sidekicks and general assistants who do most of the errands for them. Some of them are not capable of doing very simple things like booking all the things needed for a vacation package over the internet.
Add to this the sense of entitlement and belief that they are really really smart because otherwise how can you explain the free markets bestowing upon them huge salaries? They must be smart there is no other explanation in their mind. So they get really really careless.
For work-related passwords, my boss has every right to know my passwords if I get sick.
Access to the work related accounts should not depend cooperation from the employee. Trust employees to be gruntled but have contingency plans for the !gruntled too. And incapacitated, and the inaccessible as well.
My boss can simply as the sys admin to change the password of accounts on servers controlled by my employer. I don't ask my staff to reveal their passwords to me, and when they leave or get fired, it is standard ops to reset their passwords, archive the $home and give me access to those files.
But increasingly some of the work is getting outsourced. For example webex accounts are not authenticated by our servers. But still, out IT has higher level access to their tech support and my employer can get access to my work related external accounts too. I wonder how the stop the access if/when employees leave. Something to check up with IT.
Pick some nerdy site, say slashdot, and create an account. Use your password as the username, but it won't stand out in such sites. Cackling devilishly at the foolishness of the masses who do not realize that your password is hiding in plain sight is optional.
Most people look at it and ask my why or at least raise an eye brow. Now I can simply say, "NSA". And they will nod understandingly and my mojo as the rebel who defies the draconian government will go up one notch.
Basically automotive engineers, especially the IC engine worshiping kind, hate electrical engineering. They have been playing in the pissing contest of 0 to 60 time, and quarter mile time since 1930s. Their game is strapping heavier and heavier, increasingly powerful IC engines on to piddly little frames that can hardly hold the huge engines in. Then they go to track after track, magazine after magazine touting their cars and the 5.4 sec and 4.8 sec times.
But the IC engine is fundamentally unsuitable for automobiles. Their engines can not pull a car from rest. They have come up with frustratingly complex set of gears and clutches and "hydromatic" torque converters and slip disks and this and that to get the car to go to 0 to 2 mph. From 2 or 5 or 7 mph they can accelerate it well. But even there if they just used an IC engine running at constant speed to turn a generator and drive the car through electric motors they could have won their quarter mile races and 0 to 60 times nicely. It might not be economical, it might not make consumer grade, but in their concept cars, in their brand image cars and the super luxury segment where cost does not matter, they could have tried it. But they did not. It is not that the concept is unknown. Diesel electric locomotives have been in operation since 1950s. In fact the steam engines were replaced by diesel electric locomotives so fast, many steam locomotives made by Baldwin Loco Works, Philadelphia went straight from production line to scrap yard! Seeing the enormous torque these electric motors were delivering did not inspire even one auto engineers to try to have a flag ship concept car that would see if an electric motor would help them in their pissing contests. It took an outsider Musk who is not afraid of electricity to show them what an electric motor could do in a car with Tesla.
When they did not even understand electrical technology well, why would they do well with electronics?
The most common one is Creationist vulgaris. (vulgar means common in Latin, it does not mean crude). They are the rank and file people who chip in money and votes. The votes and the money form the base of the food pyramid of this genus. The C vulgaris can be relied up on to show up for rallys, to cheer their side in "debates".
One level up the food chain comes Creationist predatori minoria. These are the local parish level civic leaders, community organizers. They too sincerely believe in creationism and believe not believing in it would cause gloom and doom. And they convince themselves, that to have strong faith means they have to believe in creationism despite the obvious and patent evidence they see against it. But mostly these people go for local fame, some local power and a feeling of self importance. These are the ones used by the species higher in the food pyramid to access the nourishment created by the C vulgaris.
The highest level of this ecological niche is occupied the head honcho, the top predator, Creationist predatori majoria. Their meal ticket is C vulgaris. They will send newsletters, gather them into lectures and scare them into donating big money for the "cause". They will convince C predatori minoria to gather the flock and deliver them to the creation museum each paying $24.99 or whatever and buy "Jesus" T shirts at 40$ a pop.
So please do not treat all the Creationists as one and the same. Pity the C vulgaris, for he does not know what he is doing. Try to show the self aggrandizement and obvious exploitation of the C predatori majoria to the minoria to make them less enthusiastic about being hand maidens in this enterprise. Starved of the nutrition, the majoria will diminish greatly in size. Hopefully.
Further, most of the "arguments" for creationism is asking questions, asking for proof about evolution or to explain this anomaly or that observation. Asking questions is easy, answering them takes much longer. So again it is unfair to give equal time to questions and answers.
Science demands full disclosure, sufficient time to review the evidence and to get a consensus on what the data is. Then the argument is about what explains the data. This creationism debate is not likely to persuade the creationists, it is likely to frustrate the scientists.
It is a fools errand. Best thing to do is to let them disbelieve in evolution and let us trust evolution to drive the creationists to extinction. In the last 400 years science has done a lot to reduce the influence of creationists and reduced their numbers a lot. Just read the Creationist rhetoric from 1920s or 1950s or 1870s and compare it the current set of arguments, you will see how weak their ilk has become. The only serious bastion for creationists are the fundamentalists in Islam and fundamentalist right wingers in the USA. Almost all the rest of the developed world have moved on, most of America has also accepted the explanatory powers of evolution. Just wait for these creationists to join the Dinosaurs.
ARS Technica asks, 'How does a non-technical manager add value to a team of self-motivated software developers?'
Ars Technica asks the rhetorical question, "what use are the non technical managers?", then finds the answer as, "they solve non technical problems". They might do further research and find that adding technical managers to projects will solve technical problems too!
If you CC get stolen ... you will have to FIGHT to get charges removed unless you live in peter pan land where the fairy can fix it for you.
Well, I had two CC and one Debit card breach and one false alarm.
CC 1: @ Chicago, at a Target in fact. Did not use that card anywhere else in Chicago. No hassle to get the charges reversed. Some 5000$ in damage.
CC 2: @ London. Told them we were going out of the country. The fraudsters were charging it even after we returned and charged card in USA. Dim witted CC company did not smell a rat. But no hassles to reverse about 4000$ in damage.
Debit card: @ Aldi. The crooks pretended to be service technicians and installed skimmers at the check out counters. About 5000$ in damage, reversed without issues. But my debit card company will refund third party ATM charges too. So they refunded some 15$ in 3rd party ATM fees, then reversed all charges including the ATM fees. Was planning to call back and let them know they had refunded too much, but the cost of handling that call would exceed 15$ for them, so gave them a break and kept that 15$. :-)
False alarm: Charged a Las Vegas package, couple of watches and some dresses in 15 minute span as an anniversary surprise gift for the missus. Triggered a fraud alert call that let the cat out of the bag and spoiled the surprise. Thanks Obama.
So it is quite easy to get the fraudulent charges reversed. But the credit card companies could send SMS text for every charge and make a big dent in fraud charges. They don't seem to care. In India my brother gets SMS as soon as the merchant charges something. Funny, in India, they put ATM machines inside tiny stores with armed guards.
As you can see, within seconds of connecting the new USB device to the computer, a report is sent to watson.microsoft.com in HTTP (clear text). This report includes a considerable amount of information that is URL encoded into the request. This information includes:
Every time you plug in a device to USB port, a di-ding bell sounds. It is of utmost importance to Microsoft to know a bell has rung, so that it can promote an angel second class to angel first class with wings.
See? There is an innocent explanation for it after all.
Birth control pills are cheap compared to the cost of deliver, pre and post-natal care. It is quite possible for the insurance companies to charge more to withhold pills.
Muslims believe that during the month of Ramadan people should not even drink water between sunrise and sunset. . So Muslim employers should be able to petition OSHA to allow them to remove water coolers during day time during the month of Ramadan.
Probably because she happened to be the "duty officer" over the holidays. Earlier the SCOTUS rejected an identical petition saying they can't sue till they are actually harmed. On 1st Jan the law kicks in, someone can claim injury. At this point the old ruling is moot and should be reversed. It was probably her turn to be on call over this holiday break, so she did the ritual of granting temporary relief. Note she did so with the minimal ruling benefiting only the petitioner.
Arse is also used in the UK and Ireland, you insensitive clod!
Arse/ass is used everywhere in the world, even in places they don't speak English. How else do they eliminate the waste products of digestion?
Basically because when the company got big, the original set with fire in the belly, passion, and competition cashed out or burnt out. The second echelon came in, used short term policies got their goodies and went out. The management that remained all came of age when Microsoft was so dominant they could put out start ups that could threaten them just by press releases of vaporware. They used every trick in the book to leverage their monopoly status. They never learnt any new tricks and they can not thrive in a real level playing field without monopoly advantages.
May be it is a harsh assessment, and company that big could never be managed well, not in fast changing computer business.
If I am a columnist with some modest name recognition I could have converted this mildly amusing (to me at least) observation into a column. But alas, I am not one. So he gets to repeat the age old advice given by old Prof Mahabala, teaching Intro to Computing 201, (Fortran programming, in IBM 365/155 using punch cards no less ) back in 1980 into a column, and all I get to do is to bitch about it.
Nothing new. Nothing special,
Scene 2: Walks to his work spot, his side kick (always the comedian, by the rules of that film industry) walks up to him and tries to console him. Our hero mechanic snaps, "Load Ansys in this computer!" and movie cuts to a image of a wire frame finite element mesh of a piston and a connecting rod rotating in 3D. [Screen resolution was too poor for me to find the actual product, despite freezing and stepping through it frame by frame].
Which Hollywood movie? brrrrrrrrrrrrrp. wrong country!
Japanese? Korean? Or may be Taiwanese?. No, No and No.
May be a Bollywood movie? right country. Wrong language.
Where then?
A Tamil movie, made in South India! About six years old. Eat our dust America, Tamils are making heroes out of finite element analyzing auto mechanics!
There is some rumblings from the other side of the big divide. They don't like the three laws of robotics. Apparently some activist robots have gathered around some port and are dumping chests of hydraulic fluids and batteries over board. They are seen to be shouting, "Governance with the consent of the governed", "No jurisdiction without representation".
There are many entities with vested interest to keep the data that supports their point of view, or their profit motive or their meal ticket alive. For example data collected meticulously by a underfunded biology professor about the allotropic speciation of the salamanders around the lake hole-in-the-mud would disappear in a jiffy. But flawed research supporting the efficacy of a patented clot busting drug would be perpetuated. Epidemiological studies showing the adverse side effects of the same drug would be hunted down and eradicated.
History is written by the winners. At least part of the data/research preservation is done people with vested interests preserving it selectively.
Wasn't there a virus that was using the speaker and ultrasound to communicate and replicate? They had a clean room and an airgap still the viruses got in through the speaker and mic,